In the Kirovohrad and Ternopil regions, the Polaris Programme continues its work aimed at developing a support system for veterans at the local level. As part of this initiative, a series of regional meetings took place in February and March for specialists supporting veterans, representatives of support services, and psychologists from local communities.
The events were organised by the Polaris Programme in cooperation with the regional military administrations. The first meeting took place on 20 February in Kropyvnytskyi, and the second on 13 March in Ternopil. Their aim was to strengthen communities’ capacity to provide psychosocial support to veterans, establish cooperation between different services, and discuss practical solutions that can work at the local level.
The events were moderated by Denys Chechel, a veteran and Polaris Programme expert on integrating veterans’ perspectives into municipal activities.
“Support specialists are the people who are the first to meet veterans upon their return to the community. That is why it is important to create a space for professional dialogue, the exchange of experiences and the search for practical solutions that help to better support people,” he noted.
“When we see how actively specialists engage in the work, share their own case studies and ask challenging questions – this is the best evidence that communities truly need systemic solutions in the field of veteran policy,” added Alla Kovalchuk, a Polaris expert on supporting the accessibility of administrative services.
The meetings were organised in the form of discussions, training sessions and interactive workshops. Community specialists discussed the role of psychosocial support in the system of care for veterans, mental health as a key component of the well-being of veterans and their families, as well as the challenges faced by communities following the return of military personnel to civilian life.
The practical part of the events was led by clinical psychologists and psychotherapists Kateryna Timakina (Veteran Hub, NGO ‘Free Choice’) and Kristina Obluchynska-Shabazova (Ukrainian Catholic University, Veteran Hub). Together with the participants, they explored approaches to supporting veterans upon their return to the community, in particular the well-being model and trauma-informed work with service members and their families.
“We shouldn’t view military personnel or veterans solely through the lens of reintegration. Today, at the local level, we need to build our own set of values, one that focuses on acceptance, love and support,” noted Volodymyr Bereziuk, a psychologist with the Ukrainian Red Cross Society (Ternopil), one of the event’s participants.
Both meetings were a continuation of Polaris’s cooperation with regional administrations and communities, which began in 2025 to promote the development of local veteran policy and strengthen the support system for veterans and their families, with a particular focus on developing psychosocial services and supporting mental health in communities.
