June 7th, 2023
by Thomas McCarty and Emily Cronin
When her native country was invaded on the other side of the globe, one New Orleanian turned her outrage and worry into a project which has become a lasting positive resource in a besieged land. Katya Chizayeva, Ukrainian by birth and resident of New Orleans for about twenty years, has been an activist throughout her life. Already dedicated to veterans at home in the USA, working closely with the VA hospital and volunteering for Bastion Home of Resilience (an intentional community in Gentilly of US veterans and their families), Katya, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, felt called to support the veterans and soldiers of her native country.
As the war commenced, she began working hard for months to raise money for medical supplies, generators and other equipment to restore electricity and communication, and other essential resources. By the summer of 2022 Katya traveled to Ukraine, bringing her vocation as acupuncturist to Kyiv. She volunteered for several months at the Ukraine Lisova Polyana VA Rehabilitation Center where she teamed up with Ukrainian acupuncturists Oksana Dovbnya and Valentina Moskalenko as well as several local practitioners of Feldenkrais (a type of movement therapy), Larissa Babij, Andrei Vingluk and Katya Taranova. At Kyiv’s Veteran’s Clinic Katya and her clinic team served people suffering from the trauma and stress both physical and mental, and outright injuries of the sort that modern warfare inflicts on soldiers and civilians alike. By September 2022, she had decided to stay on another six weeks, in part to get the clinic and volunteers up to speed.
She realized the need to raise money for small living and travel stipends for the practitioners who now volunteer in the clinic five days a week as the war continues and Kyiv is increasingly targeted. The number of people coming to get acupuncture therapy increased steadily and the clinic remains busy still today, serving 30-40 people per day every day.
Katya plans to return to Kyiv in October 2023. In the meantime she continues to spread awareness and raise money for the Ukraine Lisova Polyana VA Rehabilitation Center and the acupuncture-Feldenkrais clinic.
Since her last stay in Kyiv she has teamed up with Acupuncturists Without Borders (AWB), a renowned organization who raise money and deploy acupuncturists for humanitarian causes around the world. Notably, AWB was founded in 2005 to serve New Orleans during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Currently, AWB has projects on the ground not only in Ukraine, but also Mexico, Haiti, Greece, Palestine and Puerto Rico.
You can support Katya and her team by donating to their campaign through her GoFundMe or Acupuncturists Without Borders links:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/ukrainian-wellness-fund/update/32324557/gallery/2
https://acupuncturistswithoutborders.app.neoncrm.com/forms/awb-donation
Read about Katya’s New Orleans practice here: http://www.librewellness.com/
Peoples Community Acupuncture Collective Nola 
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