Strengthening local social cohesion by supporting veterans through a community-cased approach

Ukrainian veterans are returning from the front with complex trauma, often combined with physical injuries. According to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General and the OSCE, over 90 percent of soldiers returned from Russian captivity report abuse and torture.

Trauma keeps the nervous system stuck in defense. People in this state feel unsafe even in relatively safe surroundings and choose protection over connection. This is why the veterans who most need support are the hardest to reach: they do not feel safe enough to ask for help, or even to accept help that is offered. Distrust of civilian services and the stigma around psychological help, which weighs heaviest on men, raise the barrier further.

Untreated trauma does not remain an individual problem. Health declines, families grow conflict-ridden and risk falling apart, substance abuse frequently plays a role, and isolation deepens. What begins as one person’s war experience becomes a strain on entire communities. The task of supporting veterans falls largely on families and neighbors, who carry it with little stress- and trauma literacy or support of their own. The state has appointed local Veteran Assistants as guides to services, but they receive no systematic training in dealing with war trauma, and rural communities remain particularly underserved.

Our goal is that veterans recover after service and find their way back into their families, social networks, and communities. Our project contributes to the protection of families from the conflict, violence, and isolation that untreated trauma brings. To achieve this, the project follows a periphery-to-center approach. Where the direct way to a traumatized person is blocked, we take the indirect one: we build trauma literacy and a steady, reliable presence in the circles around the veteran, from family and local assistants to professionals and peers. The veteran is not pushed to change but surrounded by competence and safety until connection becomes possible. Support reaches them where they already are because we strengthen the people who are already at their side.

Together with our partners Somatic Experiencing Ukraine and the Resource Center Lisova Polyana, we train 120 local Veteran Assistants from 15 communities and 25 professionals from rehabilitation centers and NGOs in trauma-informed work with veterans. Family members learn to understand stress and trauma responses and to support without harming the affected person or exhausting themselves. From these trained circles grow local peer groups: places to turn to that carry no stigma and require no diagnosis. Individual trauma-informed counseling and our comic handbook I CAN! accompany all participants in putting the approach into practice, while veterans who speak openly about their own recovery join as multipliers.