Kateryna

Kateryna grew up in a Christian family in eastern Ukraine with her three siblings and was forced to leave her home and everything she loves because of the war that came to their territory in 2014. When she moved to the western part of Ukraine, she recalls the story of how she had to cut her hair and sell it to get money to escape the shelling. Katia, as her friends call her, has now had this experience twice in her life, when the recent full-scale war started, she, her mother, and siblings fled abroad. Despite the financial difficulties, the lasting effects of nine years of war, bullying at school, the partial absence of her father and her mother's battle with a serious illness, Katia remains a kind-hearted and dedicated girl. She says that she did not share her parents' faith and did not like the church until she met Christ in a personal way at a Christian camp. Since then, she loves God very much and holds on to Him tightly.

Kateryna says, “After attending Young Life, I feel called to reach out to teenagers using this tool.” She joined the team a few years ago, and once abroad, she immediately found like-minded people to reach Ukrainian refugee kids. Now she is back in Khmelnytsky serving teenagers in Capernaum.

Now a Developing Global Leader, Katia is studying English language and literature. For her, higher education is a chance to get a good job and develop her career. In the future, she sees the prospect of teaching at school and has ambitions to develop her own educational platform to be able to reach teenagers directly.