"I pray that I will see peace in my country with my own eyes."

"I have been a widow for 40 years. It so happened that I don't have children of my own, but I love children very much. I worked for many years as a nanny in a local kindergarten. It makes me happy that my pupils recognise me and say hello when they see me. I loved watching them have children of their own and life goes on.

"What does war mean to me? It is something that interrupts life; it is the worst thing that can happen. My neighbour had two wonderful sons, handsome boys who were like my own children. Both went to the front to defend their homeland. One became terribly injured; the other went missing. There has been no news from him for six months. Their mother is impossible to recognise from grief. Sometimes I go out into the yard and I can still see in my mind’s eye two little boys crossing the fence coming towards me. The war ruined and destroyed their lives.

Galyna sits in her home, Ukraine.

"There was a television tower across from my house. When several rockets hit it, dozens of people were killed. It destroyed many houses around it, including part of mine. I fell out of bed and lost my hearing. Since then, I have never lost my sense of danger.

"I pray that I will see peace in my country with my own eyes. I can still remember the hunger and poverty of the last war, I remember the terrible hardship, poverty, and grief. I was little then. I don’t want this to happen in Ukraine. I don't want the enemy to destroy our whole country."

Find out more about our work in Ukraine, and how you can make a difference.