Cash assistance is helping families in Ukraine rebuild their day-to-day lives
FAO cash assistance has enabled Liubov, along with many others, to meet her family’s basic needs like food, school supplies and firewood for heating.
©FAO/ Oleksii Kovalov
A cheerful black dog dashes around the backyard farm of Liubov Yakovleva, greeting any and all visitors with a wag of not just his tail but his entire body. This four-legged friend, Karandash, helps keep Liubov from feeling lonely now that her husband has passed away and her children and grandchildren can only visit on holidays or vacations. It was, in fact, her grandchildren’s idea to give her this ball of energy so that their grandmother would not feel so alone in her village of Vyshneve, situated in the Dnipropetrovska oblast of southeastern Ukraine.
Playing with the dog, Liubov recounts her story of how she was born in a concentration camp in Germany during the Second World War. “When World War II started, my father went to the partisans and my mother, being pregnant at the time, was taken to the concentration camp,” recalled Liubov. “I was born during the war, far from my native country. And now, at the end of my life, I face war again, in my homeland.”
Liubov never thought she would have to experience war again, but now her primary concern is for her children and grandchildren.