Rebuilding Today, Shaping Tomorrow: How People in Need Supports Ukraine’s Recovery

At People in Need (PIN), we believe recovery is more than reconstruction. It is about helping people, communities, and institutions regain the ability to shape their own future. It means restoring critical services, strengthening local economies, increasing resilience, and ensuring that recovery efforts are inclusive, sustainable, and locally driven.

For more than two decades, PIN has worked alongside communities in Ukraine. Since the full-scale invasion, we have expanded our support across humanitarian response, resilience, and recovery, combining immediate assistance with long-term investments that help communities move from crisis toward sustainable development.

Reliable access to water, sanitation, heating, healthcare, and energy remains the foundation of recovery.

Many communities continue to face the consequences of damaged infrastructure, energy disruptions, and limited municipal resources. Restoring these systems is not only about repairing what has been destroyed - it is about creating stronger, more efficient, and more resilient services for the future.

PIN works with local authorities, utility providers, and communities to rehabilitate critical infrastructure across Ukraine. Our support includes water supply and wastewater systems, district heating infrastructure, renewable energy solutions, energy efficiency improvements, and climate-smart recovery initiatives.

Between 2024 and 2026, PIN supported more than 810,000 people through WASH infrastructure rehabilitation and completed rehabilitation of 125 water and sanitation systems. We have supported 85 district heating systems, completed 30 renewable energy installations, and helped more than 20,000 people benefit from renewable energy solutions that improve the reliability of essential services.

By integrating solar power, hybrid energy systems, battery storage, and energy-efficient technologies into public infrastructure, communities can reduce operational costs, strengthen service continuity during outages, and decrease dependence on increasingly vulnerable energy networks.

Recovery today must not simply rebuild yesterday’s systems - it must create the infrastructure needed for tomorrow.

Strong communities require strong local economies.

Micro and small enterprises account for more than 90 percent of Ukraine’s businesses and play a critical role in employment, income generation, and community stability. Yet many continue to struggle with disrupted markets, damaged infrastructure, workforce shortages, and limited access to capital.

PIN’s economic recovery programming focuses on helping people regain self-reliance and rebuild sustainable livelihoods. Rather than attempting to restore entire economies, our approach supports individuals, households, entrepreneurs, and local businesses to recover and thrive.

Through business grants, resilience grants, skills development, mentoring, and ecosystem-building initiatives, PIN helps entrepreneurs adapt to changing economic realities and create new opportunities within their communities.

Since 2023, PIN has supported nearly 600 businesses through comprehensive recovery support packages. These include women-led enterprises, businesses relocated due to displacement, and veteran-owned businesses. Support spans a wide range of sectors, including manufacturing, food production, healthcare, education, services, repair businesses, and creative industries.

Our recovery model recognizes that economic recovery is also a social process. Financial assistance is combined with capacity development, mentoring, and psychosocial support to help individuals build confidence, resilience, and long-term stability.

By supporting entrepreneurs, local producers, and vulnerable households, recovery investments generate benefits that extend far beyond individual beneficiaries - creating jobs, restoring local services, and strengthening social cohesion.

Ukraine has an unprecedented opportunity to rebuild in a way that is more sustainable, efficient, and climate-resilient than before.

PIN promotes recovery approaches that integrate renewable energy, energy efficiency, climate-smart infrastructure, and sustainable resource management into reconstruction efforts.

From solar-powered water systems and energy-efficient heating infrastructure to waste management improvements and renewable energy integration, we work with communities to reduce future vulnerabilities while improving service delivery today.

Green recovery is not an additional objective - it is an essential component of resilience.

Communities that invest in renewable energy and efficient infrastructure are better positioned to maintain services during crises, reduce costs, and strengthen local development over the long term.

Lasting recovery cannot be delivered to communities, it must be built with them.

PIN’s approach places local ownership at the centre of recovery programming. We work closely with local authorities, civil society organisations, community groups, utility providers, businesses, and regional development actors to ensure that investments respond to local priorities and contribute to sustainable development.

More than 260 local partners and community organisations have been engaged across our recovery programming.

At the same time, PIN actively supports ecosystem-building and stakeholder coordination through roundtables, networking events, business forums, and multi-stakeholder dialogue platforms that bring together public institutions, private sector actors, civil society, and development partners.

These partnerships help align resources, reduce fragmentation, and create the conditions necessary for long-term recovery.

Recovery must work for everyone.

Women, internally displaced people, veterans, people with disabilities, older people, and other vulnerable groups often face additional barriers to economic participation and access to opportunities.

PIN works with partners across Ukraine to ensure recovery processes are inclusive and accessible. Through targeted support, skills development, entrepreneurship programmes, and partnerships with specialised organisations, we help create pathways to employment, business development, and economic participation for those most affected by the war.

Inclusive recovery is not only a matter of equity, it is essential for Ukraine’s long-term economic growth and social cohesion.

The scale of Ukraine’s recovery requires collaboration across sectors and borders.

Governments, international financial institutions, donors, businesses, investors, local authorities, civil society organisations, and communities all have a role to play.

PIN brings together deep local presence, technical expertise, trusted partnerships, and proven recovery models that can be scaled to meet evolving needs across the country.

We are already working alongside communities to restore infrastructure, strengthen essential services, support entrepreneurs, and build resilience. Yet the needs remain immense, and the opportunities for impact are even greater.

Ukraine’s recovery is not only about rebuilding what has been lost.

It is about creating stronger communities, more resilient infrastructure, inclusive economic opportunities, and sustainable systems that can support future generations.

Together with our partners, People in Need is helping turn recovery into lasting opportunity - rebuilding today while shaping tomorrow.