Building Energy Resilience in Kharkiv Region

On a warm June morning in Pisochyn, the administrative building was unusually quiet. The power had gone out again — another reminder of how fragile the region’s energy infrastructure has become during the war. Inside, staff waited, unable to print documents, unable to serve residents, unable to do the simplest tasks that keep a community running.

But that morning was different.

As the outage stretched on, a soft hum rose from the courtyard. The new solar station — installed just days earlier — switched on automatically. Lights flickered back to life. Computers rebooted. The team looked at each other, halfsurprised, halfrelieved.

For the first time in months, an outage didn’t stop their work.

Later that week, the same thing happened at the Culture House. A children’s rehearsal continued uninterrupted while the grid went down outside. Parents watched as the lights stayed on, and one mother said quietly, “It feels like our community is breathing again.”

These moments are small, but they’re everything.

The Pisochyn Energy Independence Project wasn’t funded through GlobalGiving donations. It was made possible by the CanadaUkraine Foundation, with cofinancing from the Pisochyn community — people who believed in protecting their town and invested in their own resilience. But we share this story here because GlobalGiving supporters make it possible for Power in UA to keep showing up for communities like Pisochyn, again and again.

Two solar stations won’t end the war. But they give a community stability, dignity, and a little bit of peace in a time when those things are hard to come by.

And that’s the kind of impact your support helps create — one building, one family, one bright morning at a time.

Links:

• Video Presentation