Seven years ago, Crimean native Yuri Holikov was rescued from his addiction to opium by people who told him about the Kyiv-based Social Partnership rehabilitation center and brought him to their church.
Now Holikov is trying to help others with similar problems. He’s offering them work in his car repair shop. He hires recovering drug addicts and alcoholics, giving them a chance to master a profession by acquiring skills that could land them paying jobs one day.
“Working at my repair garage is some sort of a transitory period for them,” said Holikov. “Not everybody enjoys being in grease up to elbows or rummaging around in car screws. Some will start looking for other jobs, like driving a taxi, but no one can take their skills from them.”
Not everybody enjoys being in grease up to elbows or rummaging around in car screws. Some will start looking for other jobs, like driving a taxi, but no one can take their skills from them.”
– Yuri Holikov.
The training and employment of individuals recovering from drug, alcohol or other problems, as well as former convicts, is not yet a widespread practice in Ukraine.
But companies like Holikov’s prove that it is possible to make money and do good for society at the same time. Such companies are called social enterprises. They produce a marketable service or a product while helping reintegrate vulnerable people into society.
Unlike charities, they don’t ask donor organizations or philanthropists for money. They make it themselves. They create their own profits just like regular businesses do, but spend it to support rehabilitation centers and clinics, training programs for former alcoholics, drug users, individuals with criminal records, shelters, free lunches for the homeless and other needs.
The United Kingdom has the most developed system of social enterprises in Europe. More than 50,000 social enterprises provide various goods and services, such as offering professional training, producing soap or running hotels and laundries.
“They are quality oriented. If they do not provide a high quality good or service, they will lose their clients, thus will have no money to help their communities,” said Christine Forrester, adviser to the British Council Social Entrepreneurship Program in Ukraine.
It’s hard to put a number on the number of social enterprises.
One of those – Oselya, or Dwelling – is a charity that works in Lviv. The organization has been running a project called the Workshop for several years. The Workshop aims to equip vulnerable people with professional skills, like furniture restoration, that could help them to make their own money.
“We have four people involved in the Workshop project,” said Mariana Sokha, an Oselya employee. “We teach them to carry out furniture restoration or decorative painting.”
Two graduates of the Workshop – one has had a leg amputated, another suffers musculoskeletal disorders – make their living by painting cups and dishes. On Feb. 25, they held an exhibition in Kyiv.
We want to be a self-sustainable organization.”
– Mariana Sokha, an Oselya employee.
“We want to be a self-sustainable organization,” Sokha said.
People at Oselya have a special attitude to second-hand clothes. They believe there are no cast-off things and no cast-off people. As proof, they ran a second-hand fashion show two years ago. They collected clothes that people had thrown away and created a collection that was shown in Lviv. After the show they sold the outfits and raised some money.
Ukrainian authorities have a definition for people in need, or “people in difficult life circumstances,” as they are officially called. These are the long-time unemployed, former prisoners, drug users and alcoholics, children deprived of parental care and abuse victims.
More than 70,000 Ukrainian families fall under those categories, but these are only people officially registered by the state social service for families, children and youth; the actual number of people in need is much higher. Olena Sichkar, deputy director of the state social service said that Ukraine has 1,900 organizations helping vulnerable social groups.
Sokha from Oselya said charities that heavily depend on donors’ contributions or donations from local governments are not efficient and have no future. “Today they [the donors] have money to give and tomorrow they don’t,” she said. “But people who need help will always come to us.” Sokha suggests that switch to social enterprises, or self-support projects as she calls them, would be a great solution.
Oleksiy Brzhezinsky from Zhytomyr supports this approach. He launched a hardware workshop within the rehab center he works with. Now people who are done with treatment and rehab can try the profession of welder or blacksmith and make metal frameworks for bookstands, doors, grids and so on.
Brzhezinsky said the idea to start this project came suddenly – in 2004 the organization got a lathe and a welding machine from their American partners.
“Now this enterprise is being run by people who have been through our rehabilitation,” Brzhezinsky said. “One of them registered a private enterprise, I found a consultant for them who gives them some hints on both business and production matters.”
The four people who currently work in the workshop get 50 percent of income, which makes Hr 5,000-7,000 per month for all of them. The remaining 50 percent goes to cover the needs of the center, such as training for new rehab patients, development of new projects and advertising of their products.
“I think that our business is doing well,” Brzhezinsky said. “We found our niche on the Zhytomyr market of metal production. But it’s just a beginning, we have so many ideas to implement.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Olesia Oleshko can be reached at [email protected].
