The Editor's Post: The resilience of Ukrainian social entrepreneurs

In Ukraine, social enterprise is “a key instrument in building resilience”. At Impact Europe’s Impact Week event, Olena Kalibaba, CEO of the Ukrainian Social Venture Fund, reminded the audience that more impact investment was needed from external sources as the country continued to resist the Russian invasion.

Social enterprises are providing rehabilitation and work integration programmes for people injured in the war, supporting displaced people, as well as continuing to fulfil many of the roles they carried out before the conflict.

I’m writing this from the Basque city of Bilbao, in northern Spain, where Impact Week is concluding today. More than 1,000 delegates have been exchanging experiences about the work that they do and we heard about activities across the continent, and further afield. As ever, it’s the stories told by social entrepreneurs themselves which are the most affecting.

One of these social entrepreneurs is Alina Marnenko (pictured top), who founded Museum in the Dark, which enables visually impaired people to convey how their world appears to sighted people. The museum featured in a film, called Underseen, shown in a private screening yesterday, and which tells the story of Alina as she navigates the challenges of operating a museum during wartime – even moving its location from Kyiv to Lviv as the bombing intensified. The perspectives of some of the museum’s visually impaired team are also highlighted as they consider the effects of the missile attacks on their lives. As the war continues, the museum’s work has become more significant in supporting soldiers who have lost their sight through injury. (You can explore more about social enterprises operating in Ukraine during the war in our feature too.)

“It’s important to stay in the country and fight, and not to leave,” Anna Gulevska-Chernysh, co-founder of social enterprise support body SILab Ukraine told the Impact Week audience. Many other social entrepreneurs think the same, as there is increasing demand for the accelerator programmes and support that SILab offers. There are even mounting requests from mainstream businesses for support to become impact-focused, she said.

Of course, this commitment to their country comes at a potentially huge risk. “I’m the mother of a soldier,” said Anna, adding that she’s “always waiting for an SMS” about him. “I have to take care of my team members who are going through the worst things,” she said. Anna is also chair of the Ukrainian Social Venture Fund: “When I hear about missile attacks in places where our investees are based, we are then getting in touch to see how they are.”

The Pioneers Post team first spoke to Anna during the very first days of the war, in early 2022. The country’s social entrepreneurs were already mobilising their skills and networks to support their homeland. Three years later, it appears their energy remains undimmed. “It’s a stupid, normal reality for us at the moment,” said Olena.

Images are stills from Underseen, which is a 25-minute documentary produced by Impact Europe and Deia Media, with funding from the European Union, Impact Europe and private donors. It is yet to be premiered.

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