International Organization for Migration Vilnius Office (IOM Lithuania) has awarded €75,000 to promote entrepreneurship for war refugees from Ukraine. The 26 Ukrainians with the best business ideas received financial support after the selection process.
"In total, we received almost 100 applications, while almost 150 people participated in the entrepreneurship training beforehand. It is very important that people are willing to learn and achieve their goals. The financial support from IOM Lithuania is a kind of a first step for the implementation of the ideas," says Eitvydas Bingelis, Head of IOM Lithuania. According to him, Ukrainians who found themselves in a foreign country initially needed time to adapt and adjust to their new circumstances, as well as the knowledge of where to start. "As an organisation, we provide assistance to Ukrainians based on the results of our research and we see what the main needs and challenges are, so we try to respond to them," says Bingelis.
"Ukrainians are trying to build a life in Lithuania, they are looking for new opportunities and this is very important, most of the Ukrainians I have trained have more or less had business experience in Ukraine, so it is not surprising that when they came to Lithuania they did not want to take up a salaried job," says Elena Semenchuk, an entrepreneurial mentor from the Ukraine, who has been consulting for 7 years on various business projects in Lithuania, Spain and other countries. She has given entrepreneurship training organised by IOM Lithuania to 148 war refugees from Ukraine. "Having worked for more than 15 years in various multinational companies, I have accumulated a lot of experience and now I am happy to share it with others. I think that in Lithuania, due to digitalisation, it is easier to open a small company, but of course there are a lot of differences in mentality that Ukrainians have to take into account in order to attract more clients in Lithuania," says Semenchuk.
One of the IOM Lithuania Entrepreneurship Grants participants, Tetiana Lymanska, came to Lithuania from Starobelsk, Luhansk region, where she and her family travelled for almost 5 days. "When the war broke out, our town was occupied by the occupiers, we hid in the basement, we tried to go to rallies and protest against the occupiers, but we noticed that the people who were protesting with us disappeared and nobody knows where they are to this day, so when we realised that our lives were threatened, we left our home together with our parents," begins the story of Tetiana Lymanska, a Ukrainian woman from Ukraine.  Because the family lived near the front line, they had to travel through Russia and Latvia before reaching Lithuania. "I don't remember how we packed our things or how we left our home," says Lymanska.  After a very difficult journey, they managed to reach Alytus, where they sought help. Initially, the family lived in a rural tourist farm in Kaptchia town and hoped that the war would soon be over and they would return home to their normal life, but time passed and they had to look for a job to support themselves. "I had my own business in Ukraine, we had been decorating events for more than 12 years, working with a team of 10 people, but all that had to stay in Ukraine, and in Lithuania we had to start all over again. I was looking for opportunities to create, I started small, I made balloon decorations and then the happy clients came back, so the circle grew. I'm glad that I was able to work with Mantas Petruškevičius, a well-known florist in Lithuania," says Tetiana.
Building a new life is not easy, she says. And it's hard to do in any country. "In Ukraine, we had a settled life, but here we had to start from scratch, and we had to pay a lot of attention to our daughter to make her feel safer after the horrors of war, and our parents came to Lithuania with us so they need help too. I am glad that with the financial support of IOM I was able to spend money and just buy the goods I needed for my work", says Tetiana. Now she is successfully creating and contributing to more beautiful holidays in Lithuania. 
Natalia Nesterenko came to Lithuania from Kiev at the end of April 2022, just after the occupants had left Kiev. In the Ukrainian capital, she held a management position in a dairy company. However, investment and development came to a standstill with the outbreak of the war.
"I arrived in Lithuania at the end of April 2022. I had no relatives or acquaintances here. I needed to find a way to earn money, so I started cleaning my house. At first, I started with one-offs, but then the number of clients grew, and together with my colleague, we took on more and more new and bigger projects, including large law firms, and now we are slowly getting established in Lithuania," says Natalia. With financial support from IOM, she bought the equipment needed for cleaning. "I have started a new life in Lithuania, and I am trying to do it without paying attention to the difficulties. I want to create something new and fight for my safety," says Natalia. According to Natalia, it is very important for a successful business not to be afraid of challenges and to pursue them. 
Katerina Bodakva came to Lithuania from Kharkiv and opened a café in Šiauliai, which she called "The Taste of Happiness". Katerina says that when the war broke out, she and her family moved to the town of Kremenchuk to protect themselves from gunfire and air raids, then moved to Lithuania, but after living there for about half a year, she decided to return to her homeland again. "I really wanted to go home, I couldn't fit in in Lithuania, but at the end of 2023 we realised that we had to leave Ukraine, it had become too dangerous for my younger daughter, although my son-in-law is still fighting on the frontline for Ukraine. Of course I want to go home very much, but we have already taken our first steps in Lithuania", says Katerina. In Ukraine, she used to run a clothing shop, but when the war broke out, she had to put everything on hold. "When we decided to live in Lithuania, I had to figure out what I wanted to do, what direction I wanted to take. I was working in a café and then I saw the IOM call for applications for entrepreneurship projects, I applied overnight, and then everything turned around and there was no choice but to implement my plans", says Katerina with optimism.  Together with two other Ukrainians, she has opened a café in Šiauliai, where she invites people to try a variety of delicacies. "I'm happy that Ukrainians come here, that they spend time here and feel at home, because that homesickness never ends," says Katerina. 
Almost 87,000 Ukrainians have come to Lithuania since the beginning of the war in Ukraine
.This assistance for Ukrainians is funded by the U.S Department of State: Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM).