Building own house as rehabilitation for servicemen

The non-governmental organizations ask President Petro Poroshenko to support the project of socialization and rehabilitation of the ATO participants.

Representative of the All-Ukrainian People’s Coordinating Council of Maidan Oksana Andriyenko says that this year’s state budget provides for allocation of UAH 3.5 billion for construction, purchase of housing, vocational social adaptation and rehabilitation of the military. However, these funds are used inefficiently due to the ill-prescribed mechanisms for their intended use, lack of accountability and socialization technique.

“These problems will be repeated from year to year, and people will not receive the necessary rehabilitation and socialization,” Oksana Andriyenko says.

The public activists suggest that the state use an innovative method of psychological rehabilitation “Marching to Peace.”

The servicemen, who return from the ATO area, will voluntarily build their houses, cottage settlement, places of work and infrastructure, not only for themselves but also for the village community, supervised by twenty professional psychologists and trainers.

The construction technology allows the use of unskilled labor, the program’s authors say. At the same time, the participants in the program will receive certificates to validate their new construction skills.

“This housing and place of work will be built by hands of the rehabilitated persons. Psychologists will take 10-20 people under their management and will virtually pass the process of construction of housing and creation of workplaces within 7-12 months from its start to finish, being along with rehabilitated around the clock,” Oleksiy Satov, the author of the program, the President of the NGO “Free Generation” says.

The fact that all servicemen will work together during the construction is very positive moment, as they will better adapt to civilian life, the former Artemivsk battalion fighter Vitaly Ovcharenko says.

“We all know that after the war it is difficult to adapt to other people who are not connected with the war. In fact, that’s why much misunderstanding arise. Their task will be to move from military life to civilian life, to pass from war to construction,” representative of the Maidan. Monitoring Information Center Vitaly Ovcharenko notes.

Ovcharenko mentions: if the initiative is implemented, the soldiers from Donetsk and Luhansk regions, especially from the occupied territories, will finally get housing.

“For example, Lviv, Cherkasy, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kharkiv residents have home to return to in most cases. However, Donetsk and Luhansk residents, who are fighting for Ukraine, have no place to go. We see that they will have no such place in the nearest future, too. We should implement such initiatives not to turn their lives into endless chain of shifts, from the base to the barracks, to the checkpoint,” Vitaly Ovcharenko says.

Oleksiy Satov mentions that construction of housing and the workplace will cost the state only UAH 6,000 per square meter within the pilot project, and UAH 4,000 within future projects. He argues that the energy-efficient construction technology is completely safe during the process of building and use.

The NGOs have appealed to the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, asking him to support the project, as the government authorities oppose it.

“All support us by word, but in fact there is bureaucracy that is not ready to take responsibility for implementing reforms and such an important project for the country,” Oleksiy Satov says.

“Mr. President, you gave me the award. I saw in your eyes you are not indifferent to the ATO participants. So I ask you to support and give a chance to the volunteer initiative to return all the ATO soldiers to a peaceful life, for them to get a decent job and own house, providing their employment, not a bunch of free time during which different unnecessary thoughts are born,” Tetiana Skrypachenko, representative of the “Union of Participants, Veterans, Disabled Soldiers of the ATO and Combat Operations” reads the appeal of young hero of Ukraine Volodymyr Hryniuk.

If the state supports the volunteer initiative, it is planned to build a suburban village of 150 houses with the area of 50, 60, 70, 80 square meters.

The volunteer initiative “Marching to Peace” is supported by such NGOs as “Free Generation”, “Union of Participants, Veterans, Disabled Soldiers of the ATO and Combat Operations”, Charity Foundation “Help to ATO Veterans”, NGO “International Security Center”, NGO “All-Ukrainian People’s Coordinating Council of Maidan”, NGO “Barricade”, Kyiv City Automobile and Motorcycle Club, NGO “Maidan. Monitoring” and many others.

As is known, according to the psychiatric service of the Defense Ministry of Ukraine, 5,500 servicemen underwent treatment because of mental impairments, 35% were invalided out because of mental disorders for the period of conduct of the anti-terrorist operation till April 2015. About eight hundred ATO fighters have post-traumatic stress disorder.