Ukraine: "We had lost hope" — rebuilding a family home in Kharkiv Oblast

Said had lived in Ukraine since 1993. He and his family had spent years building their home in Vilkhivka, a village in Kharkiv Oblast, and had only just completed the renovations when the war in Ukraine escalated in February 2022. The mortgage was still unpaid.

Within days, the village became a frontline. Street battles tore through Vilkhivka. A neighbour's house exploded nearby and a man was killed. Said's family held on as long as they could but eventually fled.

"The house right next to ours exploded," Said recalls. "That's when we understood we had to go."

When they returned, they found what remained: a collapsed roof, fire-blackened rooms, no electricity, no water, no gas. The structure was standing, but barely liveable.

"Almost 70 per cent of the work we did ourselves"

Rather than waiting, the family started rebuilding on their own. They replastered walls, made basic repairs and, eventually, re-covered the roof with their own funds and labour. By the time aid organisations began arriving to assess the damage, much of the initial work had already been done.

"We did the plastering ourselves, fixed things where we could. Almost 70 per cent of the work at home we did ourselves," Said says.

Despite their efforts, assistance was difficult to secure. Several organisations visited, but the scale of the damage was more than their available funding could cover. Others declined for procedural reasons: the family was not living in the property at the time, even though it was uninhabitable. Still, they hoped to return as soon as the house could be made liveable again and had already used their savings to repair what they could.

"Organisation after organisation came. They said: it's impossible to live here, we can't help you," Said says. "Honestly, we had lost hope."

A phased approach to a complex repair

DRC first came to Vilkhivka as part of a broader response: distributing multipurpose cash assistance, running psychosocial support sessions and providing explosive ordnance risk education to residents. In the course of that work, the team encountered Said's family — and it quickly became clear this was not a standard case.

The damage required major reconstruction: roof, windows, doors, electrics, plumbing, heating system, boiler and chimney. Two contractors approached by DRC declined the job before the team changed strategy. Rather than seeking a single contractor to manage the entire project, DRC provided direct support to Said through staged cash payments — releasing each instalment after the previous phase had been completed.

Following a comprehensive assessment of the full scope of work needed to repair the home, coordination with Said ensured the work progressed in phases: the roof first, then windows and doors, then electricity, plumbing and heating. The total cost of the intervention came to approximately $15,000 making it one of the more complex cases within DRC's programme. 

"It's hard to believe what it used to look like"

Today, the house has a roof, heating, electricity and running water. Said, his wife, and their child are preparing to move back in this summer — finishing the last touches as they go: filling and relaying the cracked floors, putting together the stairs, and completing the interior. The family of three is finally coming home.

Said pulls up photographs from the aftermath of the shelling: charred beams, hollowed-out rooms, a caved-in roof. He looks at them quietly.

"When you walk in now," he says, "it's hard to believe what it used to look like."

Said's family is one of many households reached through DRC's Shelter and Settlements programme in Kharkiv Oblast, implemented with support from Switzerland through the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.