Category: BEARR News
BEARR Newsletter June 2025
Art therapy sessions for children living in eastern Ukraine organised by BEARR partners June 2025 Dear friends and colleagues, In this summer edition of our newsletter, we give an update on the Ukraine Community Resilience Fund, and reflect on its launch event with Professor Victoria Donovan. We’re also pleased to announce the selected projects for this year’s Small Grants Scheme, …
Project Report: How seeds became a path to self-employment
SGS 2024 Grantee: Voznesensk Community Foundation in partnership with the Agency for Economic Development (AED), Ukraine Project: New Agrarians: self-employment of IDPs through agricultural production Despite its modest budget, this initiative, supported by the BEARR Trust’s Small Grants Scheme, demonstrated impressive results and proved that quality seeds and knowledge can be powerful tools to support people facing …
Project Report: Beyond Drama: How Dialogue and Support Changed Lives in Odesa
SGS 2024 Grantee: Ukrainian Sisters Are Kidfriendly, Odesa, Ukraine Project: Joint Adaptation of Mothers and Children In 2024–2025, with support from The BEARR Trust, our foundation implemented this project for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Odesa. What began as a simple goal—to help women and children feel more supported in a new city—quickly evolved into something …
Book Review: Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East
Review by BEARR Trustee Sam Thorne – 13 May 2025 Life in Spite of Everything is a thoughtful and elegiac book dedicated to the people and places of the ‘Donbas’ region in eastern Ukraine. The author, Professor Victoria Donovan, interweaves analysis of the region’s colonial and industrial histories with personal memoir and lyrical descriptions of …
Report: Professor Victoria Donovan talk – 8 May 2025
Report by BEARR Trustee Sam Thorne – 24 May 2025 Talk topic: Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East Speaker: Professor Victoria Donovan In conversation with: Ross Gill, BEARR Chair The BEARR Trust marked the launch of the new Ukraine Community Resilience Fund with a special online event on 8 May with …
Project Report: Safe Spaces for Women in Wartime
SGS 2024 Grantee: Country of Goodwill and Human Rights Bureau ‘We are’, Berezan, Kyiv region, Ukraine Project: Recovery and Resilience: Strengthening the cohesion of vulnerable groups, their potential and resilience in the context of the ongoing war A Solution That Offers Grounding: How Mutual Support Communities Became Safe Spaces for Women During Wartime Ukraine remains under …
Project Report: Empowering the Displaced in Georgia
SGS 2024 Grantee: Association Imedi, Zugdidi, Georgia Project: Engagement of Displaced People for Change In a modest office in Zugdidi, the team behind the project has been quietly leading a transformation. With support from The BEARR Trust and its Small Grants Scheme, and fueled by determination and a deep sense of duty, the local NGO Association …
BEARR Newsletter April 2025
Art therapy sessions for IDPs in eastern Ukraine organised by BEARR partners April 2025 Dear friends and colleagues, In this edition of our newsletter, we announce the launch of the Ukraine Community Resilience Fund, which continues BEARR’s support for local organisations in Ukraine through a longer-term recovery approach. To mark the launch, we invite you to …
Project Report: Integration through Creativity in Ukraine
SGS 2024 Grantee: Association of Community Initiatives Support “ASSA”, Kharkiv, Ukraine Project: New Kharkiv residents. Integration through creativity The city of Kharkiv is located 30 kilometres from the Russian border. Almost every day its residents experience shelling. Despite this, the city is home to approximately 1.2 million residents, and internally displaced persons from settlements in the …
BEARR Event: Life in Spite of Everything: In conversation with Victoria Donovan
On Thursday 8 May, we marked the launch of the new Ukraine Community Resilience Fund with a special online event, featuring Professor Victoria Donovan, Professor of Ukrainian and East European Studies at the University of St Andrews and author of Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East. In this conversation, Victoria reflected …
