30,000 stories: Ukraine's Museum of Civilian Voices collects firsthand testimonies about the war. Why is it important?

Since 2014, the Museum of Civilian Voices of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation has been collecting, preserving, and sharing stories about life during the war in Ukraine. Currently, the Museum's archive already includes 30,000 firsthand stories. 

This is the world's largest archive of stories of civilians who have become victims or witnesses of war. 

The primary goal of the Museum is to become a reliable source of information so that not a single story, not a single voice, not a single crime of Russia in Ukraine is forgotten. It is important to preserve the memory of the past and the present for a peaceful, better future for Ukraine.

However, the Museum has another meaningful vocation: it is a unique psychotherapeutic project that promotes the psychological well-being and mental health of the people of Ukraine who went through the war.

Telling stories has a certain healing effect. In the process of a frank conversation, a person can share their own pain, and also learn through the website of the Museum about those who have similar feelings and experiences. Telling stories is a part of psychotherapeutic work with trauma, which really gives a result.

Workers and volunteers of the Museum of Civilian Voices of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation continue to communicate with people and record their stories. 

The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation is Ukraine’s biggest private charity. Since 2014, the humanitarian aid the Foundation provided helped save millions of people from Donbass. Thousands of them shared their stories with the Foundation, so they were put together as a unique online museum. Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the Museum has become an archive of the tragedies of the whole Ukrainian nation.

To share a story, anyone can visit the Museum’s portal and click on the “Tell a story” button in the top right corner of the main page. Another option is to call the toll-free hotline 0 (800) 509 001 in Ukraine.