The sounds that accompany Ukrainians' lives during the war are hardly ones you'd call pleasant — wailing sirens, buzzing drones, explosions, the drone of generators during long power outages... But to some extent, these very sounds provide bearings and hope for survival, warn of danger, or signal that life goes on. And it's hard to even imagine how much more limited and dangerous the world is for people who are hard of hearing or deaf. These people are often left facing wartime danger completely alone, since they can't hear warnings from loudspeakers or instructions from emergency workers. In Ukraine today, you still can't count on medics, police officers, or rescuers knowing sign language when it's needed...
The NGO "World of Silence" decided to try to change this situation. Its leader, Ivanna Mykhailenko, understands the urgency of the need firsthand, since she is herself deaf. This gave rise to the idea of teaching sign language to rescuers, medics, social workers, and civil servants from different regions of Ukraine, so they could help deaf people in crisis situations.
Turning a volunteer idea into a professional educational hub became possible thanks to support from the "Sparks of Communities: ISAR Ednannia and GlobalGiving Partnership" grant competition. The project was named "Ukrainization.Deaf." As a result, a sign language training course was created, focused on practical vocabulary for critical situations: evacuation, mine danger, first aid, and communication during air raid alerts. Demand for this kind of specialized knowledge turned out to be enormous: "World of Silence" received 189 applications for the course, while the project, which launched in May 2026, was designed to train 50 specialists from the most vulnerable regions: Sumy, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.
Grant funds were used to purchase professional equipment and studio lighting to produce high-quality video content. This matters because in sign language, every movement and every facial expression carries meaning. As a result, the project team built a database of 343 sign language video dictionary entries. Alongside this, participant training was underway, focused on actions to take during emergencies. Experts were also brought in to help participants master correct terminology and learn how to communicate with cochlear implant users and with deaf people who also have autism.
The project's results confirmed a massive shortage of inclusion skills across society. Despite its "niche" topic, social media posts about the training rack up tens of thousands of views. Precisely because society has a demand for this kind of knowledge, "World of Silence" has already sent official letters to the Departments of Social Protection in Ukraine's front-line regions, proposing that sign language become a mandatory skill for every worker in critical fields.
The "Ukrainization.Deaf" project has set a precedent for transforming total vulnerability into a systemic solution. It's not just a successful initiative — it's a model ready to be scaled up at the national level.
The grant competition “Community Sparks: ISAR Ednannia and GlobalGiving Partnership for Resilience” is implemented by ISAR Ednannia with funding from the GlobalGiving platform.
