The Women’s Perspectives Center nongovernmental organization arranged seven shelters for internally displaced (IDP) women in Lviv.

Volunteers, psychologists, and coaches visit women and a career counselor helps with job search and placement. Workshops, art therapy and sports are supervised for children in the shelter. From spring to the autumn, when the weather is warm, women and children can walk outside near the forest.

Rehabilitation therapist Maryna Onyshchenko, who works at a shelter in the center of Lviv, is an IDP woman from Kreminna: “We first moved to Bakhmut, thinking that there would be no more war there, but we had to move from Bakhmut to Lviv again in May,” she says.

It’s too early to talk about results, Maryna says, but women’s emotional state is improving: “They are happy, and I sincerely want to help them because I am an IDP myself.”

The Women’s Perspectives Center has been operating in Lviv for 25 years. Prior to the large-scale Russian invasion, it worked in five areas: Overcoming domestic violence; human trafficking; combating gender discrimination; strengthening women’s decision-making; and, developing civil society and feminist organizations. The same topics the organization was working on before February 2022 are still relevant.

 We are pleased to support the important work of the Women’s Perspectives Center within the framework of the Capable and Resistant Project with the support of the Government of Switzerland.

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