The strength of a community lies in its ability to unlock the potential of those who defended it. On this principle, the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation has launched a new project, "Veteran and Community", delivered through its Heart of Azovstal initiative.
The project's goal is to help Ukrainian communities become more veteran-centric: to create an environment where veterans can find their place, realise their potential, work, study, develop, and take an active part in community life.
The pilot will run in the Bucha and Kamianske communities, with the participation of the Kyiv School of Economics and the American organisation America's Warrior Partnership. Together, the partners will adapt the best international experience of working with veterans to Ukrainian realities.
Within the project, the communities will complete training, conduct an audit of their existing veteran services, and develop their own strategies for supporting veterans. The central task is to bring existing opportunities together into a single, clear system, one in which a veteran can easily find the services they need and the community gains a powerful resource for its own development.
"Veteran and Community" is a further step in the area of post-traumatic growth, which Heart of Azovstal is implementing systematically across Ukraine. Regaining control over one's own life depends not only on support for the individual, but also on the environment in which that person lives.
The initiative builds on Heart of Azovstal's wider work for the defenders of Mariupol, which provides housing, rehabilitation, and advanced medical support to wounded veterans. It also reflects the ten-year strategy that our shareholder, Rinat Akhmetov, set this year with the renewed supervisory board of his charitable foundation, which placed veterans among six priority areas through to 2036, alongside children, sport, recovery, education, and remembrance.
Together, we are building communities in which veterans become a driving force for the future.
