These are the stories of three youth-led projects supported by the Young Diversity Ambassadors (YDA) program which utilize various forms of dialogue to bring us closer to an open-minded democratic society. They are the stories of young people who learn and try to change the world while growing and changing themselves.

“We proved that we are normal, and they also opened up to us”

I am Dasha. I was often discriminated against because of my sexual orientation. I am a lesbian.

Once I did an internship at the hair salon. I was on the phone with my girlfriend. Girls who worked there for a long time told it to my boss, who reported it to my supervisor. Both of them came to work. They brought us all together, and here we went again: “How could you? It is not right. When you get back to school, I will take you to a psychologist, and she will knock it out of your head.” She said that someone “has to put us over their knee and spank with a belt to beat this nonsense out of us.”

In the end, she didn’t take me to a psychologist (she probably forgot, thank you very much). But I still felt unequal treatment. Often teachers gave me lower grades than I deserved: I didn’t receive a scholarship despite my hard effort. I was also ignored during the assemblies.

Often people think that there is something wrong with us. My relatives made it sound like I killed someone and was about to serve a prison sentence… 

That’s how I got the idea to create the project “Equality Dialogues” which would show that the LGBTQI+ community are people just like all the others. We work, think, and talk like everybody else.

The community often faces discrimination during therapy, at doctor’s appointments, or at meetings with other specialists working with people. That’s why we decided to hold a series of educational events for students to help them understand that it will also happen in their practice. We wanted them to pose all the uncomfortable questions now, in the conversations with “human books”, and not later, speaking to clients.”

The format of the human library or the human books implies that people become the books. They share their experience or answer readers’ direct questions. This conversation provides a whole new level of contact and trust compared to the “communication” with the paper books. During the “Equality Dialogues,” two such events were held at the Zhytomyr universities. Dasha (Daria Rybalko) and project co-creators Anna Kolodnitska and Karina Kolesnyk became the books. The first human library was made for prospective psychologists. “At first we told them about coming to terms with our sexual orientation, and then spoke about our coming-outs to parents, friends, and ourselves,” Dasha recollects. “We talked about ourselves for half a lesson, and then we just chatted with them. We let them know they can pose us any questions.” In addition to two human libraries, during the project, they held two workshops for young people “Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity 101”.

Before implementing “Equality Dialogues”, the project creators went to the YDA workshops. “My partner and I attended the basic workshop in the village of Babyn, in Khata-Maysternya,” Dasha says. “It was cool. The atmosphere and people around were inspiring. It was also important for me to have a grasp of all these topics. I am not used to this daily routine, with us beginning work at 9 AM. But it was also a vacation of sorts because there was no connection there.”

Dialogue is always a matter of interaction. It comes as no surprise, then that the target audience of “Equality Dialogues”, young people, prospective psychologists and medics weren’t the only ones changed by the project. Human libraries and workshops have also served as the source of valuable insights for the project creators. “I used to think that most heterosexuals outright hate the homosexual people,” Daria Rybalko shares. “I thought they would approach us with severe discrimination and lack of understanding. That they won’t be accepting. However, after the human library, people actually came to talk to us. Both us and them were interested. Sometimes people have their prejudices thinking it’s bad. But we came to them showing that we are normal, and they opened up back to us.”

On respect and mutual support

Oksana Bohutska is a project manager of the Chernivtsi youth center “Youth Residency”. Together with its team, she has implemented the project “Barrier-free Dialogue” as part of the YDA.

Oksana’s story started with her participating in the inclusivity and accessibility workshop organized by the NGO “Protection”. “I thought that youth workers need to be aware of these topics,” Oksana says. “Basic knowledge is integral for further growth. I also need to understand what’s acceptable and what is not OK during a speech or in everyday conversation. After the workshop, I realized that our city has severe problems with accessibility.”

She has also understood that there are plenty of societal taboos and stereotypes surrounding people with disabilities, including wheelchair users. “There is this stereotype, that if a person uses a wheelchair, it’s over for them….” Oksana muses. “Or think about the slurs often used for people with disabilities. Downie, retard, deaf and dumb… The biggest stereotype of them all claims that they are not OK and need to be separated from the others. It is not OK. It’s not about respect or mutual support. Inclusion and accessibility are totally different. All of us are on equal terms. All of us have the same rights to self-actualization, work, and study.”

After the workshop made by the NGO “Protection,” the participants got the convenient opportunity to study project management. The “Youth Residency” team, Oksana and her colleagues Liubov Prokop and Inna Kirchyk have taken on this opportunity. Later their ideas culminated in the creation of the “Barrier-free Dialogue”. The idea of the project is to create and promote ten thematic videos, such as “Proper communication with people with disabilities”, “Inclusive education: providing equal opportunities for all pupils and students”, and “Mental health and inclusivity: how to discuss the invisible problems”.

It is worth noting that the project was born after the workshop made by the NGO “Protection”, and the organization experts kept in touch with the activists, providing help in the project implementation. “They supported us,” Oksana says. “Serhii Shcherban was our mentor. Maria Nikitina was our advisor: she worked with the texts, checking how they covered the topics, what was right and wrong.”

The series of videos is but the beginning of the dialogue, an invitation to the more profound talk. The first steps should be followed by more. “I realized that the topic is super important,” Oksana Bohutska muses. “There are dozens of taboos and stereotypes. There is plenty of work, lots of preconceptions to debunk. “Barrier-free Dialogue” will be the cornerstone of our upcoming projects. We would like to hold workshops focusing on these topics. To make something bigger. Possibly we’ll even create a brochure, a handbook.”

“This is our life”

Semen Koshovatyy was first engaged in civic activism back in the ninth grade. He was a volunteer at the different events, mainly at the cycling events in Chernivtsi. Later he participated in the “Building Ukraine Together” project and graduated from the Ukrainian Leadership Academy. He was the head of the national office of “Let’s do it, Ukraine”. In 2024 he set up an NGO “Active City Foundation” along with his colleague Liudmyla Romanchuk.

One day, Semen realized that many people in Ukraine don’t understand their rights or political processes. “When I won the project from the NGO “Action Office”, we were attending the advocacy accelerator,” Semen says. “One of our trainers, Oleksandr Solontai, said that the society suffers from the total political illiteracy. Many people, particularly the youth, are not aware of their rights. They don’t know who the prime minister is, what the critical thinking is…” Semen has decided to change it, explaining to the young and prospective voters the basic concepts, such as the branches of government in Ukraine, the duties of the government officials, and their spheres of responsibility. And the most important thing: how to defend your rights.

To improve the situation, Semen Koshovatyy and Lyudmyla Romanchuk have implemented the “Act! Know! Affect!” project that was supported as part of the YDA project. “Act! Know! Affect!” is a series of interactive lectures for senior high schoolers and university students from courses 1-3.

“Before the lectures, we asked some questions to the audience,” Semen says. “And most of them have no idea what happens. That’s why we start with the Ukrainian political system, slowly moving to media literacy and critical thinking. We explained how to analyze the news and political statements. We tried to convey the information and activate their school knowledge to which they were indifferent because back at the time, it wasn’t relevant. We explain that now it is our reality. We begin every lecture by saying that lacking political literacy and not knowing your rights is akin to playing a board game without a clue about its rules.”

Semen plans to keep working on the initiative, improving the lectures, expanding the reach of the project, and teaching the teams that would hold these lectures independently. “At the first stage we can make the events on the level of the city or region,” he says. “We even talked with the head of the youth council working under the regional council. We would like to scale up the lectures to the regional level so that we and members of the youth council would be able to visit other regions.” It is important that the project affects the young people attending the lectures but also Semen and his organization. “That’s how I become self-actualized in my civic activism,” Semen explains. “Prior to that, I either worked on the really local initiatives or participated in someone’s projects. I feel that what we are doing now signifies the beginning of something bigger under my command.”

The project “A network for democracy: Building a future with the European leaders of tomorrow” is implemented by the NGO “STAN” and ActionAid in partnership with the NGO “Center for Social Transformations TENET”, NGO “Insight”, NGO “Chernivtsi Association “Zakhyst” with the support of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Denmark). This project is a part of the program “Young Diversity Ambassadors”

This is a program for youth and youth workers to strengthen social cohesion to create an inclusive, peaceful society, minimize the likelihood of conflicts arising between different groups, and accelerate the integration of young IDPs. The program is implemented by the NGO “STAN” in partnership with the Alliance for Rights, Equality and International Solidarity “ActionAid” with the support of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), Global Fund for Children (USA), Terre Des Hommes (Germany) and IM Swedish Development Partner (Sweden).