From the day of honoring Barbara the Great Martyr, the Eleos-Ukraine nonprofit together with the Synodal Department of Social Service of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine will be telling stories of the strong women who had been subjected to violence but never betrayed themselves.
Eleos-Ukraine is a platform for cooperation between non-governmental organizations, religious communities, and public sector, based on democratic values and non-discrimination in order to address social problems. One of its activities is running shelters for victims of domestic violence, Vechirniy Kyiv reports.
A series of stories #Sviati_ta_Kruti (Saint_and_Cool) is about women who are important to Christianity and who were subjected to domestic or other violence.
The project is being implemented through a range of publications on Father Serhiy’s blog. The first article is dedicated to St. Barbara, a girl who for years had been suffering from domestic violence before dying at the hands of her own father.
“With these stories, we want to remind you that the Church, and the OCU in particular, condemns all forms of violence and is ready to help women who have been subjected to it. And also to emphasize that domestic violence is not the norm and never was: neither in the 3rd century, nor in the 10th, nor in the 21st. Violence has always remained violence,” said Serhiy Dmytriyev, an OCU archpriest, military chaplain, and head of the board of the Eleos-Ukraine NGO, who authored the idea. He implements the project together with journalist Maria Semenchenko, who is responsible for copyright.
