An update from Veliky Lazy, Ukraine — for our prayer and financial partners
Friends, we wish you could stand here with us and see what your prayers and giving are building.
Brick by brick — or frame by frame, since STUD Frame Homes is doing the work — a new apartment complex is rising in the Veliky Lazy IDP community. When it’s finished, this building will give nine displaced families a place to call home: four handicap-friendly apartments on the ground floor, five more above, each one sized for families of four to six. There will be one shared kitchen on every floor, a common living room downstairs, and a laundry room where neighbors will fold towels together and trade stories instead of trauma.
This project exists because the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) believed in it, and because One Collective’s Visible Fund invested in STUD Frame Homes as a Ukrainian business that could build with both skill and compassion. That’s the kind of partnership that turns a war zone into a place where dignity gets rebuilt one room at a time.
Where the Building Stands Today
Right now, the exterior shell is complete. The second floor is framed and insulated — not pretty yet, just frames and insulation, with drywall still to come — and the electrical and sewage lines are already run underground. Next, we lay heating pipes beneath the first floor before the flooring goes in.
Fifteen families who once had nothing will have a door that locks, a bed that’s theirs, and neighbors who understand exactly what they’ve survived.
A Story Worth Reading
We recently shared the story of three families — survivors of years behind occupied lines, a flood, and a 2,800-mile detour through enemy territory just to come home — who finally walked into homes we had already finished. If you haven’t read their story yet, we’d encourage you to. It’s a window into exactly what these walls will mean for the nine families still waiting for theirs.
Read their story: ACROSS THE RIVER: Escape From Oleshky
So Close to Fifteen Families Housed
We are only $6,000 away from finishing our sixth tiny home. When that home and this apartment building are both complete, we will be housing fifteen families in the Veliky Lazy IDP community.
A Small Joy Along the Way
Our Sister City, Corvallis, Oregon, had donated playground equipment for our Rroma Social Life Center, and a few leftover pieces found a second home on the playground here at Veliky Lazy. Even the children get a reminder that someone, somewhere, was thinking of them.
None of this happens without you. Every pipe in the ground, every panel of insulation, every swing on that playground is your prayer and your gift made visible. Thank you for refusing to let these families be forgotten.