The large Sayenko family from the Mykolaiv region now has a new home thanks to our Fort Home program.

The family lived in the village Shevchenkove, and there Iryna and her five children met a full-scale war. During massive russian shelling, the family hid in their own cellar, over which deadly rockets repeatedly flew.

Iryna remembers how frightened children hugged her and cried when the house shook from the blast waves. And even after the alarm was over, Marina, Sasha, Katya and Ilya were afraid to leave the shelter. For a long time, the children shuddered at any loud sound. Only Maksymko, who was only one year old at the time, seems not to have realized all the horror.

Once Russian shells exploded just 2 kilometers from their home. After that, Iryna quickly gathered their stuff and documents, and already in the morning, together with her 5 children, she was waiting at the station for the evacuation train to Lviv.

However, it was not so easy to get on it then. “Many people. There was panic. In the carriage, 5-6 people were sitting on one bed. Crowded. At the stops, thanking the volunteers, they gave us water and food,” Iryna told about their way to safety.

Already in Lviv Oblast in the village of the Pidhirtsi family was taken under the care of the New Life Church. And here the Save Ukraine team installed several modular houses for the long-term housing of IDP families whose homes were damaged by the war. One of them was the Sayenko family.

Now, according to Iryna, they have psychologically recovered from what they experienced. The children found friends and resumed online learning. But most importantly, the family found the lost peace and safety.