Graduates of the Summer School of Journalism and Media Work, held in August as part of the “Youth for the Future of Ukraine” project, have joined the creation of a new video series, “Ukraine’s Recovery: Directions, Priorities, Challenges.”

This is another format of working with young people in which participants not only talk about Ukraine’s future but also seek to identify what exactly needs to change and what personal role each of us can play in bringing about these changes.

One of the participants in the video series is Andriy Martyniuk, a student at the Volyn Orthodox Theological Academy and a member of the “Academic Youth” team.

Speaking about the problems facing his community, Andriy focuses not so much on a lack of resources or insufficient action by the state, but on another problem: the habit of shifting responsibility onto someone else.

“This applies even to basic environmental initiatives,” Andriy says, giving simple examples: cleaning up your own street, organizing a community clean-up around a local church, school, hospital, or park. Yet, in Andriy’s view, it is precisely through such small actions that a sense of shared responsibility is formed.

“In fact, everything begins with each of us. Ukraine, as one well-known public figure once said, begins with you. You should do what you can, with those who are there, where you live.”

This idea is also important to the very approach of the “Youth for the Future of Ukraine” project. Its participants do not simply identify current problems in Ukrainian society – they learn to analyze them, discuss them, look for possible solutions, and turn their own vision into concrete team project ideas.

That is why Ukraine’s recovery is not only about resources, government decisions, or rebuilding infrastructure. It is also about people who are ready to take part in change.

The central idea of the video series is: “Ukraine’s future begins with how we want to see it. And with what we are prepared to do to make it that way.”

In this series, young participants do not simply talk about the problems facing their communities or Ukrainian society as a whole. They try to look at them more broadly: what will change in people’s lives and in the community if a particular problem is solved, why this matters for society, how it can contribute to the common good, and what values should underpin such changes. In this way, young people’s personal visions develop into a conversation about our shared future, our responsibility for it, and our willingness to act for its sake.

🎥 Watch Andriy Martyniuk’s video from the series “Ukraine’s Recovery: Directions, Priorities, Challenges.”

The project “Youth for the Future of Ukraine: Dialogue, Research and Creative Media Work for the Consolidation of Ukrainian Society and Orthodoxy” is implemented with the support of the German Government (Zivik/IFA).