In early June 2026, the Chirikli Roma Women’s Fund took part in the Living Library — an annual interactive project of the Docudays UA festival, where instead of reading books, visitors talk to living people.
The event took place in Kyiv, as part of the RIGHTS NOW! lecture programme near the Zhovten cinema. The fund was represented by Kapitolina Kondur.
A format where you can question the book
The Living Library works simply: instead of reading someone else’s story, a visitor sits down across from the person who lived it and asks questions directly. No intermediaries, no second-hand retelling.
That directness is what makes the format powerful. Experiences that usually stay on the margins of public conversation are told here in the first person — and the person listening can disagree, clarify or ask again.
The stories that became books this year
This year’s selection was built around resilience and resistance. Among the books were people who survived occupation and captivity, veterans, and civilians who stepped up to defend the country.
A separate thread ran through stories about preserving identity — the experience of indigenous peoples and the work of communities under wartime conditions. Each of them shows how communities hold together when the familiar order of life has been destroyed.
The voice of the Roma community
The Roma community was also among the storytellers — people who, despite the war and long-standing prejudice, continue to develop their own culture and remain an active part of Ukrainian society.
For Chirikli, being part of such a selection has a practical purpose. Stereotypes about Roma are rarely disproved by statistics, yet they often fall apart after a single honest face-to-face conversation.
Why dialogue works where arguments do not
Prejudice lives on distance: the fewer specific faces a person knows, the easier it is to think in generalisations. The Living Library shortens that distance to the width of a table.
The Chirikli fund thanks the Docudays UA team for creating a space where such a conversation is possible. We are convinced that respect grows precisely from these direct encounters, in places where barriers stood for years.
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