Before the conflict, Valerii Babenko’s family had a stable life. He and his wife had jobs and lived in a spacious home. When their house was destroyed, the entire family had to move to their relatives’ place.
"When we came back, there was simply nothing to repair," Valerii remembers. He turned to the local municipality for aid, but there was no budget for it. NRC was already operating in that frontline area. Our engineers assessed the damage to Valerii’s house. It was severe.
The Babenko family is one of six to receive aid from NRC in 2016 for full house reconstruction. They first received a conditional cash grant for building materials in June 2016 and began construction work at once. Together with three friends, Valerii worked so hard that he managed to reconstruct the house within three months – well within the timeframe for finishing the construction work. The house is built with environmentally-friendly materials and in full accordance with the construction standards of Ukraine.
If we had not received help from NRC, we wouldn’t have our house rebuilt. We would simply have nowhere to return to.Valerii Babenko
When the construction was completed in September, the family could finally return home and resume their lives. Valerii’s wife now has a new job and he wants to work in transport services in Popasna. Their son, Maksim, a secondary school student, plans to start vocational school this summer. He wants to become a railway engineer.
NRC launched a pilot project in 2016 to reconstruct destroyed houses in the Luhansk region’s frontline communities. The project involves constructing a new "core house" for the recipient family on the existing foundation of the destroyed one, which could be subsequently expanded if the family acquires more resources. Based on an owner driven approach, NRC provides building materials or a conditional cash grant for construction materials and labour costs, while the recipients themselves organise the construction work.
Since the start of housing reconstruction, we have helped ten families to build new homes, with an additional 30 planned for 2017.
