Nelli, a 70-year-old activist from Pomichna, a small town in southern Ukraine, is fairly new to the humanitarian sector. Just a few years ago, she applied for a leadership training in Kyiv, which inspired her to create her own CSO. “At that time, I realized that no matter how old I am, I can do humanitarian work, and it can even be quite fruitful,” says Nelli.

In her town, this work was truly needed. Pomichna, whose symbolic name translates as “Helping” in Ukrainian, was among the first to receive evacuation trains from the Donetsk region, where some of the heaviest fighting was taking place. Today, out of Pomichna’s 10,000 residents, around 20% are internally displaced people (IDPs) fleeing shelling and occupation.

Wanting to make life in the town easier for them, Nelli, who was already running craft and handmade projects, applied for a grant from Oxfam’s local partner, The Tenth of April, with the idea of a social bakery. The bread they bake would go to IDPs, as well as large families and the elderly. Partners helped Nelli’s organisation buy ovens, refrigerators, kitchen hoods, and furniture, and the team started making bread.

“You’d think few people are in need of bread, but you would be surprised,” says Nelli. “When we started our bakery and decided to hand out bread to people, we discovered that so many can’t afford it. There’s a veteran in our town who got sick. It’s hard for him to work, and he just gets a couple of hundred hryvnias (less than $50) a month in social support. So, he comes in, helps us, and gets bread in return. There are IDPs who lost their identification documents; they also come in and help. Elderly people sometimes cry when they get our bread.”

But these are not just ordinary baked goods; Nelli’s bakery is trying to revive the long-lost recipe of Pomichnianskyi bread, which was once famous far beyond the borders of the town.

“People from all over the region used to come to Pomichna for this bread. When we started baking and handing it out, one of the older residents said they never expected to taste it again,” Nelli recalls.

The bakery has since become a “studio” where Nelli and her team teach locals to bake Pomichnianskyi bread, hoping to bring the tradition back to life. There are master classes for children, and more than 100 have already learned to bake. Nelli’s studio bakery has become a meeting place for their parents and new community members. They come not just to bake, but to talk, laugh, and feel the warmth of support in their new home, Pomichna.