Community voices: News from Busha Toloka, GEN Ukraine
A personal reflection about Busha Toloka by Maksym Zalevski , president of GEN Ukraine and the coordinator of Ukrainian Ecovillage Network.
Read more about the Busha Toloka here, the community house project initiated as a response to the start of the war to serve as a refugee shelter in the short term and as an event space and community centre in the long term.
Busha Toloka is currently going through a period of transformation in its coordination and community life. The community is increasingly coming together around tolokas — traditional Ukrainian gatherings for collective work and mutual support.
Together with Katya Serbina, Oleksii Zhdanov, one of the coordinators of the Busha community, has initiated a number of environmental projects, including the creation of the Lyskivka Hill Nature Reserve and the “Clean Murafa” ecological initiative.
These activities are happening alongside the community space that was built with the support of GEN Europe communities. For me, this feels like a meaningful continuation of what has been happening across our movement as a whole.
As the coordinator of GEN Ukraine, I can say that over the past few years environmental stewardship and ecosystem regeneration have gradually become one of the strongest sources of meaning and cohesion within our network. It is one of the things that continues to unite us during a war that has now lasted for years.
I think this is important to acknowledge because when the Busha community space project originally started — now the largest and most expensive community space built through GEN Europe donor support in our network — the primary vision was very different.
The original idea was to create a shelter and living space for internally displaced people who had lost their homes because of the war.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, that vision did not unfold as expected.
The Green Road project, which connected ecological communities with displaced families, has long since completed its mission. People in Ukraine have adapted to wartime realities in ways that few of us could have predicted. Even winter blackouts and the loss of heating in cities have generally not convinced people to relocate to community spaces in rural areas.
Every winter we continue to offer this possibility. People are grateful for it. One of my public appeals to residents of Kyiv reached more than 100,000 people. Yet most choose to remain in the cities and, when necessary, even shelter in metro stations rather than relocate.
This is simply the reality we face today.
The Busha space is therefore no longer functioning according to its original purpose.
And yet something new is emerging.
A vibrant new life is taking shape in Busha, connected to the same themes that are increasingly shaping the ecological movement throughout Ukraine: regeneration, restoration and stewardship of ecosystems.
“In Earth We Trust.”
This became one of the first shared slogans we adopted while searching for what could unite us after years of crises, uncertainty and transformation within our network.
By restoring the land, we restore our communities.
During the past autumn, winter and spring seasons alone, more than twenty tolokas have taken place in Busha. People have gathered to care for landscapes, improve public spaces and strengthen community life through practical work together.
Yesterday Oleksii told me something that stayed with me. He said that he literally has not had enough time to sit down at a computer and publish updates because there is simply so much happening on the ground.
His enthusiasm inspired me to share this news myself.
Busha is gradually becoming a meeting place for environmental activists, conservationists and local initiatives. Events are already being held there on a regular basis, including cooperation with regional authorities who actively support these efforts.
