Last weekend (3 - 4 February 2024) in a picturesque corner of Hamburg, at the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund Ortsverband Hamburg-Mitte e.V. (ASB), the third training seminar "Psychological support for victims of war in Ukraine" took place.

Refugee women from Donetsk, Kyiv, Kherson and Kharkiv regions of Ukraine took part in this event. 

During 6 months the project team consisting of project manager Oleksandr Goncharenko, psychologists Alla Danilich and Natalia Stepanenko, assistant to the project manager Galina Goncharenko held three two-day training seminars. Thirty-one Ukrainian women, who were stranded in Germany because of Russian military aggression, took part in the seminars.

The age of the participants ranged from 23 to 70 years old.

The project team received 18 letters of thanks and positive feedback from the participants of the workshops.

Summarising the results of the past seminar, project author Alexander Goncharenko said: "I cannot stop the war that Putin unleashed, but I can and I am trying to help the refugees of Ukraine in Hamburg".

It should be noted that without the support and assistance of the Hamburg Foundation for  Politically Persecuted persons and personally the Foundation's executive director Martina Baeurle and the organisation ASB Hamburg (headed by Günter Arndt), the workshops would not have been possible.

During the workshops, the women not only learnt various techniques of psychological self-help and mutual aid in difficult life situations, but also made friends.

Further communication between the participants of all three past workshops and the project team takes place in WhatsApp group chat, and it goes far beyond psychological issues.

Life goes on!

Photo 1 Group shot of the participants of the third workshop;

Photo 2 Alexander Goncharenko, project manager;

Photo 3 Psychologist Natalia Stepanenko at work;

Photo 4 Training in practice;

Photo 5 Another group exercise;

Photo 6 Demonstration of individual methodology;

Photo 7 Cooks fed the participants with Ukrainian cuisine for two days;

Photo 8 A starling flew in as a symbol of spring and continuation of life!

On 26 January, together with Vladimir Papkov (far left in the photo), we attended a meeting with activists from the Hamburg branch of the Green Party.
The meeting was organised by District Councillor Britta Ost (second right) and Hamburg MP Dr Gudrun Schitteck (third right). The keynote speaker at the meeting was Manuel Sarracin (second from left), member of the German Bundestag (2008-2021) and currently the German government's special representative for the Western Balkans.
They discussed Russia's military aggression against Ukraine, the crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the conflicts between Kosovo and Serbia.