Helping others is no longer just the purpose of volunteers and charitable foundations.
Many Ukrainian brands nowadays make it their mission to do good, besides just doing well. They employ people with disabilities, donate to charities, support those in need and, most importantly, make Ukraine a more inclusive and conscious country.
The Kyiv Post has made a guide to socially responsible shopping with Ukrainian brands offering homeware, accessories, jewelry and more.
Guzema Fine Jewelry
Guzema Fine Jewelry is one of the best-known jewelry brands in Ukraine and a holder of two local Elle Style Awards. The brand is not just known for its elegant pieces but also its charitable efforts.
Just a year after launching the brand in 2017, its founder and designer Valeriya Guzema created a piece to be sold exclusively for charitable purposes. The chic necklace combines five pendants with words “love,” “believe,” “pray,” “share” and “help.” Each piece costs Hr 13,500 (around $483) and is available in white and yellow gold.
All the money from sales are donated to Tvoya Opora charitable foundation, which helps children with congenital heart conditions. As of April 2021, Guzema’s project has already raised over $168,000, paying the cost of vital surgeries for 80 children.
For her business accomplishments and charitable efforts, Guzema was listed among the winners of the Kyiv Post’s 2020 Top 30 Under 30 awards celebrating young Ukrainian leaders.
Guzema says it is highly important for her to keep creating sophisticated jewelry but also help others.
“We are very proud of this project,” Guzema told the Kyiv Post in November.
Now the designer is expanding her charitable activity with the launch of the Guzema Foundation in March. Its first effort was to support one of children’s hospitals in her home town Chernihiv, a city of 280,000 people some 140 kilometers north of Kyiv. Guzema has already purchased equipment for the hospital for nearly Hr 535,000 (around $191,000).
Shop at Guzema.
Ohra Home
Helping others has always been a key principle for Ukrainian Yuliia Bihun. About four years ago she started a charity fund, Tvoya Lubov, together with her husband Nazarii Bihun, aimed at supporting children in difficult life circumstances and families of children with disabilities.
The more Yuliia Bihun supported those in need, the better she understood the issues these families, and mothers in particular, were dealing with.
“One of the greatest challenges for them is employment,” Yuliia Bihun told the Kyiv Post. “They need a flexible schedule since they can’t leave their children alone for a long time.”
She decided to change that. Along with her husband, Yuliia Bihun started Ohra Home, a brand that produces bed linen sets and employs mothers of children with disabilities.
Since its launch in December, the brand has hired four such women along with two professional seamstresses. The company is currently training two more mothers of children with disabilities for their further employment.
Besides being a socially responsible company, Ohra Home is also known for the great quality of its bedding sets. They offer hand-sewn bed linens in different sizes and colors for Hr 950-2,000 ($34-72). Apart from their available choice, the brand can also produce tailor-made bedding upon order.
Since Ohra Home is a new brand, it is not yet profitable. However, as soon as it is, the company will start donating money for the treatment of children with disabilities, as well as expand their production to help “as many women as possible.”
“Ohra Home emerged because we wanted to solve these two problems — employment and medical services for children with disabilities,” Bihun says.
Ozerianko Bags
When Daria Ozerianko, the founder of Ozerianko Bags, decided to adopt a pet over two years ago, she came across the charity fund Happy Paw that finds owners for shelter animals and takes care of them in the meantime.
Ozerianko decided to support the foundation and has chosen the most creative way to do so: She launched a campaign called “Oz for Happy Paw” that offers to customize one of the brand’s bags with an image of a customer’s beloved pet.
The photograph of the pet is hand-painted on a bag or backpack using a special technique that protects it from deterioration. The service costs Hr 1,500 ($54), which has to be paid on top of the accessory price that range from Hr 1,450 to 7,850 ($52-281). All the money paid for customization is donated to Happy Paw.
“It is an opportunity for pet owners to participate in helping animals who are not so lucky,” Ozerianko told the Kyiv Post.
Ozerianko says that although customization doesn’t have big demand among the brand’s clients, the project fulfills another important goal of raising awareness about the foundation and the issue of stray animals in Ukraine.
“Even if people do not buy our product, they will find out about Happy Paw and make some donations themselves,” Ozerianko says. “It’s like the circulation of good,” she adds.
Shop at Ozerianko Bags.
Lady Di
Sophisticated silk scarves by Lady Di have been a hit among Ukrainian fashionistas for several years.
But they are more than just stylish pieces with artsy designs. The unusual patterns the brand uses on the scarves are painted by children with Down syndrome and other disabilities.
The women behind the brand, Yaryna Yanchak and Iryna Liakhovenko, have seen the lack of inclusion of people with disabilities in their home town of Lviv, a city of 730,000 people more than 500 kilometers west of Kyiv. They couldn’t stay away.
“It was important for us to help people with disabilities because nobody noticed them,” Liakhovenko told the Kyiv Post.
They started a company that now employs over 20 people, more than half of which are people with disabilities and mothers of children with disabilities. Their Soniachna Maisternia (Solar Workshop) provides art classes and art therapy for adults and children with disabilities and disorders like Down syndrome.
The brand encourages children to do art and even pays students of Soniachna Maisternia for their best pictures to use them as patterns for scarves. Each of the Lady Di scarves costs around Hr 300-1,000 ($11-36). They are made of silk and feature minimalistic abstract patterns, bright-colored flowers and other images.
Apart from the scarves and the workshop, Lady Di also produces linen tablecloths and bedding hand-sewn by women with disabilities.
Sebira
Small Ukrainian brand Sebira manufactures unusual wooden bags. But that’s not the only thing that makes it stand out.
For every bag it sells, the brand’s team plants a new tree in Kyiv “to return to nature what they have taken,” says Sebira’s founder Iryna Sebeleva. The small team of three people has already planted nearly 80 trees across Kyiv and plans to plant over 30 more trees this fall.
They cooperate with municipal enterprise Kyivzelenbud which helps the company in finding suitable locations and trees for planting and takes care of the greenery after.
Sebeleva says they invite the brand’s customers to take part in planting as well.
“We show people that it’s important to do something good for the city,” Sebeleva told the Kyiv Post.
Each of Sebira bags costs Hr 2,500-3,000 ($90-107) and nearly 25% of one piece’s price is spent for planting a new tree, according to Sebeleva. The brand offers bags in all shapes and colors. Sebira uses mainly maple tree wood for bag production that helps to make accessories lightweight and durable.
But social responsibility is still the core of the brand: Sebeleva says that even such small steps can help in making Kyiv “the greenest capital in Europe.”
