Out of more than 250 veterans who have been through our programme, six have stayed to train as facilitators.
This path requires something almost impossible to find in one person: the presence to hold a room that trusts no one, and the humility to make it about them, not you. The authority of having been there — and the softness to sit with pain without fixing it.
Six people learning to hold all of that at once.
Becoming a Hopeful Future facilitator isn’t a course you complete. It’s a practice you build, group by group, session by session, over months of supervised experience.
Each facilitator travels to groups across Ukraine as a trainee, co-facilitates alongside experienced leads, and works through a structured development programme before they’re ever in the room alone.
That takes time. It takes travel. It takes supervision, assessment, and ongoing support.
And it takes something most training programmes don’t account for: these men have families to feed, they need to work night shifts, they need to travel for hours for the next groups.
They do it because they believe in it, and because veterans trust them in ways they simply don’t trust anyone who hasn’t been through what they have.
We need more of them. And we need to make it possible for the ones we have to keep going.
Craftsman and builder from the Carpathian foothills. Served in the infantry, wounded in combat and poisoned by phosphorus. Father of two. Lead facilitator of the programme, he also works in military hospitals supporting veterans in recovery.
Career soldier from the age of eighteen, nine years as a reconnaissance trooper. Demobilised after a serious wound, 26 surgeries. Worked in addiction therapy, now in the defence industry. A creative soul – paints and makes woodwork.
Lawyer and construction entrepreneur who left Poland to return to Ukraine and serve. Sapper and drone operator. Father of a one-year-old son; his wife also serves. A man who does not walk past injustice or someone needing help.
A miner from a small town, later worked in logistics, volunteered in 2022. Father of a son and a daughter. Infantry unit commander, five combat wounds. Now captain of a veteran rowing team in Dnipro and veteran community activist.
Entrepreneur before the war. Served in the infantry, was wounded, and returned home with a disability. Founded a veteran NGO and studies for a psychology degree. Father of a daughter he hopes will grow up in a free Ukraine.
Sniper and reconnaissance soldier. Served from 2014, fought for Donetsk Airport, fought for Kherson during the full-scale invasion, wounded in 2023. Father of a daughter. Currently studying for a psychology degree.
He chose to go back to Ukraine, to fight for his country, knowing what it meant. A sapper in Donetsk.
Difficult return. For the first time, he shared his pain, guilt, anger with those who understood.
Learning to hold space for others still finding their way back, to become someone others can lean on.
Back to himself, facilitating groups, helping veterans. Back to life, with plans, dreams and a hopeful future.
… or you may decide to do a one-off donation, which will be used fairly to support our facilitator’s pathway.
