Over the years, dozens of volunteers have contributed to organizing Donbas Media Forum. They have welcomed and registered participants, coordinated conference rooms, assisted speakers, and handled countless organizational tasks without which a large-scale forum simply could not happen. For DMF, volunteers have never been just an extra pair of hands; they have always been an important part of the team and the community that has grown around the Forum.
At the same time, each volunteer has their own story connected to DMF. For some, volunteering was their first introduction to the professional media community. For others, it was an opportunity to meet future colleagues and friends, gain experience in organizing major events, or understand which direction they wanted to take professionally. Some later returned to the Forum as journalists, coordinators, moderators, or speakers, while for others, volunteering became one of the first steps in their professional careers.
Ahead of Donbas Media Forum 2026, DII-Ukraine spoke with volunteers from different years about how they first became involved with the Forum and what changed in their lives after that experience.
Dmytro Zaraiskyi
The first Forum I took part in was in 2025. I had already known about DMF because I first applied to volunteer back in 2024, but I did not receive a response. Then a friend sent me a message saying that volunteer recruitment had opened again, so I applied, and this time I was accepted. It was my first experience of this kind, but many of my university friends were volunteering as well, so it was easy and fun.
What impressed me most was the scale of the event — how much organizational work goes into it and how many people are involved in the Forum. I cannot say that I met a huge number of people, but the sense of belonging to the journalistic community was incredible.
After the Forum, I continued helping with events and volunteered several times at the Business & Media brunches. While working on my bachelor’s project, I created a podcast about life in cities in eastern Ukraine and eventually joined the DII-Ukraine team. I am currently working on a project about the symbols of Donetsk region.
Valeriia Muskharina
I became a volunteer at Donbas Media Forum in 2023. At the time, I was still a journalism student at Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, so I was interested in the opportunity to help organize such a major professional event. I remember the feeling of suddenly finding myself inside the journalistic community and meeting in person colleagues whose work I had previously only seen, heard, or read in the media.
The Forum was held in Kyiv that year. I met many people from different regions of Ukraine, including students from my university. After that, volunteering at DMF effectively became a tradition for me, and I returned in both 2024 and 2025. In 2025, I was already coordinating volunteers at registration and, for the first time in my life, took part in a panel discussion as a speaker. Together with the team of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, I presented research on journalists’ mental health. At the same time, it was interesting to coordinate the process, work with the team, and quickly resolve organizational issues.
What I remember most is the sense of community. I met very different journalists from both national and local media. I realized that our profession is ultimately about people, professional solidarity, responsibility, and constantly learning from one another.
Some of the people I met there have remained part of my professional network ever since. And I think this is one of the most valuable outcomes of volunteering: you come to help for a few days, but you end up meeting people whose paths will cross yours many more times throughout your professional life.
After the Forum, my professional life changed quite significantly. I continued developing as a cultural journalist and worked in the information service of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, where I learned a great deal. I became interested in journalists’ safety, trauma-informed journalism, the work of media professionals during wartime, and support for Ukrainian journalists.
Today, I am studying at New York University (NYU) in a master’s program in Global Journalism and International Relations, where I received a full scholarship. Looking back, it was opportunities such as volunteering at Donbas Media Forum that gradually helped me build my CV, gain experience, and develop valuable leadership skills that ultimately brought me to New York.
Danylo Vereitin
For me, Donbas Media Forum is an entire planet in the solar system of my professional life. The first Forum took place in Kyiv in 2015, and that was where I volunteered and, perhaps for the first time in my life, felt the heartbeat of a major event. Before that, I had never been involved in organizing large-scale events. You could say that volunteers are the cogs in a large machine, but they are an essential part of it.
I have countless memories from DMF 2015, and not simply because I am an impressionable person. That year’s Forum became a meeting place for many media professionals from Donetsk and Luhansk regions who had lost their homes in 2014. After that turbulent year, DMF became the first event where all those people could embrace one another again, now in the new reality of their lives.
After gaining invaluable experience as a volunteer at the first Forum, two years later I was already leading the volunteer team myself. In Sviatohirsk in 2017, the work was a real pleasure: three intensive days of panel discussions, workshops, and masterclasses. Together with a wonderful team of volunteers from different parts of Ukraine, we not only helped resolve day-to-day issues for Forum participants but also gained a deeper understanding of the local character and mentality of Donetsk region. In this sense, Donbas Media Forum also became a kind of space for social exploration.
By 2025, my role at DMF had shifted to communications. I also moderated a panel discussion on the place of specialized media in today’s media landscape. When I think back to my first DMF and look at the path I have travelled since then, it feels incredible. I went from being a displaced student to becoming head of the sports desk at RBC-Ukraine and a radio host. Donbas Media Forum played a major role in that journey because it is a place where you can make many valuable professional connections that may prove useful at the most unexpected moment.
Inha Pavlii
I volunteered at Donbas Media Forum in 2018, when it was held in Kharkiv during the summer. I learned about the opportunity from lecturers at the Department of Social Communications at Mariupol State University, where I was studying at the time and had just completed my second year. I thought it would be a great opportunity to visit Kharkiv, meet some of the country’s well-known journalists, and attend interesting lectures — and that is exactly what it turned out to be.
What I remember most was probably the overall atmosphere. I met journalists from both regional and national media. I attended lectures by some of them and had the chance to speak personally with others. I also met other journalism students who were volunteering at the Forum. As fate would have it, I am still in touch with most of them. One of those connections even influenced the choice of the job I have today as a journalist.
After the 2018 Forum, I returned the following year, but this time as a journalist and participant. By then, I was already working as a radio journalist at Avtoradio Mariupol. After the start of the full-scale invasion, my family and I moved to Kyiv, and I now work as a journalist for the regional media outlet Skhidnyi Variant, which covers developments in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Our team also regularly participates in Donbas Media Forum.
Iryna Khokhodra
In 2017, I was a student when Olena Taranenko, head of our journalism department, suggested that I become a volunteer at Donbas Media Forum. For me, it was an opportunity not only to take part in a major media event but also to see from the inside how the professional journalistic community works.
The Forum took place in Sviatohirsk. At the time, I could not have imagined how long that experience would stay with me. What I remember most are the people, the atmosphere, and the opportunity to be surrounded by journalists with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. As a student, it was an extremely valuable practical experience.
During the Forum, I had the opportunity to speak with and interview both Ukrainian and international journalists. This was important because university gives you a great deal of theoretical knowledge, but events like this allow you to test yourself in real-life communication, see the profession from the inside, and understand how much broader it is than what you study in class.
Of course, I also made new connections. But perhaps the most valuable outcome for me was the experience itself — the opportunity to be part of a major professional event and to feel that I was no longer simply a student, but someone who could already work within the journalistic community.
Over the past nine years, my professional life has changed enormously. I went from being a student and DMF volunteer to working directly in the media. Today, I work as a correspondent and line producer at Suspilne Vinnytsia. I prepare stories, work with interviewees, conduct interviews, look for topics, and produce content. And I think it is precisely experiences such as Donbas Media Forum, as well as the people and opportunities you encounter at the beginning of your professional journey, that help you understand where you want to go next.
