16 July 2025
(Photo: Intent.Insight)
Volunteers are people who have been working for more than four years without vacations, days off, or the opportunity to rest. However, even the most resilient of them sooner or later face emotional burnout.
Valeriy Bolgan, host of the live TV show "Intent.Insight" on July 15, and Olena Rabchuk-Krylatova, journalist and head of the Prolyudey media project, discussed the reboot of volunteers.
The ProLudei media project has recently launched a series of free retreats for volunteers. Olena Rabchuk-Krylatova came up with the idea for the project after observing how strong volunteer teams are forced to wind down their activities due to emotional exhaustion. It is often about women who forget about themselves and their families, focusing only on helping others.
A retreat is a period of personal or group solitude for spiritual or psychological work on oneself. The purpose of the retreat is to dive deeper into one's true nature and see one's daily life as the realization of this nature. In some traditional schools, the retreat is a continuous sitting meditation with breaks only for sleep and food. Others include physical and intellectual work, cooking and eating practices, walks, and socializing as much as meditation.
"We have long been involved in the psycho-emotional recovery of women - mothers, wives of soldiers and prisoners of war. Now we are expanding our work to include volunteers. Because burnout among them is a problem that will soon become widespread at the national level," the volunteer noted.
According to the organizer, registration for participation in the first three or four retreats to be held in the Odesa region will start soon. If support can be found, participants will be able to go to the Carpathians.
Registration will be opened through the pages of the Prolyudey media project on social media. Participants must be volunteers who were actively working during the full-scale invasion. Participation is free, all expenses are covered by the organizers.
"The main thing is that the volunteers do not disappear, that they remain in the ranks, but do not lose themselves. The retreat is about internal support, support, and the right to recover," Rabchuk-Krylatova summarizes.
How to join the retreats:
In addition to the retreats, Olena advises volunteers to revise their schedules and add weekends to them, and not to forget that volunteers, like nonvolunteers, have the right to feel tired and emotional:
"If you want to cry, cry. If you feel tired, lie down. If you are very nervous, be nervous. It's normal."
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