Participant of the Regional Competition "Young Person of the Year – 2025" in the Nomination "Public Figure of the Year" Oleksandr Nesterenko
My name is Oleksandr Nesterenko, born in 2001. I am the head of the Pokrovsk Youth Council, the public organization "Patriots of the Ukrainian Donbas," and simply a volunteer.
My story began in 2014. As a teenager, I traveled with my parents to the hotspots of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to help Ukrainian soldiers—with food, ammunition, and other essentials. Since then, volunteering has been a part of my life. In 2016, I enrolled at the Pokrovsk Pedagogical College, where I led the student volunteer movement. With a musical team, we gave concerts in military hospitals, boosting the morale of wounded soldiers while also helping military units.
Even before the full-scale invasion in 2022, my like-minded friends and I created volunteer groups and developed plans for responding to emergencies. Since February 24, some of my friends have become soldiers, and others have become volunteers. Together, we built a community that provided the front with everything necessary: from food, medicine, and thermal imagers—to camouflage nets and vehicles, which we repaired and painted ourselves.
Since 2019, I have been implementing my ideas with the Pokrovsk Youth Council. In 2021, I became the deputy head, and in 2023, I became the head. The Youth Council has become a family to me. We have implemented dozens of important initiatives: car rallies, unity marches, tree plantings, film screenings, poetry and game nights, and charitable actions and marathons to support the Armed Forces. Our best initiative was the forum "Youth of the Donetsk Region - for Victory," which united young people from different communities in the Donetsk region.
One of the largest projects and an example of cooperation between youth, authorities, and the military was the installation of a monument to the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred in 2023. The thirteen-ton, more than four-meter-high monument, in the form of a "candle of remembrance," has become a symbol for the people of Pokrovsk of preserving historical memory and immortalizing the feat of the heroes who fought for a better future for Ukraine.
During the full-scale invasion, I initiated the creation of the Museum of the Modern Russian-Ukrainian War. The idea was born thanks to my friend Dmytro Lysenko, the deputy head of the Pokrovsk Youth Council, who took up arms from the first days of the invasion, defended Ukraine, and heroically died in his native Donetsk region. Today, the museum operates at the Pokrovsk Sports and Youth Center in the city of Dnipro and has about 3,000 exhibits. It is a place of memory, strength, spirit, and national unity, as many items were donated by defenders who have already died.
In 2025, thanks to my participation in the "Leadership for the Restoration of the Donetsk Region" program, I paid special attention to the topic of medical support, creating the project "Mobile Hospital," which is designed to provide primary and secondary medical care to residents of frontline and de-occupied territories of the Donetsk region.
For my activities, I have been awarded commendations from the Donetsk Regional State Administration and the Pokrovsk City Military Administration, as well as numerous awards from military units. I have the "Cross of Civil Merits" and the "For Dignity and Patriotism" badges. But for me, all these awards are not the goal. My work is a responsibility—to my Homeland, to people, and to the memory of the fallen. I believe in the Donetsk region, in its revival, and I do everything I can to bring our Victory closer.