HOPE HOME – НАДІЯ
A pilot project for a radically different way of building in Ukraine

Phase 5 HOPE HOME • НАДІЯ
Further workshops in Pervomaiske possible with your donations
Between May 26 and June 8, 2025, hemp construction expert Dr. Norbert Höpfer from the HOPE HOME • NADYA team, accompanied by Adrienne Goehler, will fassilitate workshops on building with hemp/lime and straw/clay combinations in Pervomaiske. Together with village residents, the community center will be further repaired and hopefully made functional during this workshop cycle.

Workshop Hempstones, Dr. Norbert Höpfer, ZNE!, Berlin 2023, Photo Andreas Rost
Artikel suspilne-media online von Nazari Rubanyak – Wikipedia | Olga Woroschilowa
Half a year after russian shelling – how the former front-line village lives in the Mykolaiv region

Pervomaiske resists! Repairing with hemp-straw-clay

Short version: Donation amount increased, next steps and HOPE HOME • НАДІЯ Visions
HOPE HOME • НАДІЯ is a German-Ukrainian pilot project for a radically different – ecological – building in Ukraine.
Since December ’24, under the umbrella of Be An Angel e.V. , we have been asking for donations for a safe, warm and dry meeting place in the very damaged Pervomaiske community center. From this collective community, 30 km from the capital of the Mykolaiv Oblast, we and the population want to stand up to the global cartel of the concrete industry with the renewable, CO₂-free building materials hemp, straw, wood, clay and reed, mushroom and sheep’s wool , and thereby show that building without CO₂ emissions is possible! Pervomayske aims to become a pilot village for researching ecological construction using renewable, hybrid and recycled materials. And thus also create jobs. We recorded this together in a memorandum with the district government. Due to the provisional budget management in Germany, minimal public support is not expected through a new budget before June 2025. But the winter and the great exhaustion are NOW dominating the country, we know from all the news channels how the energy supply is in Ukraine, about the many uninhabitable houses and places.
What we have already achieved with your help: The meeting place has windows! The hemp walls are more than halfway up, tiles for the floor have been found and paid for. Now it’s about laying electricity, installing doors, buying heating, finding chairs, preparing toilets, planning the future. Only then can the villagers leave the only heated public place for gatherings, the kindergarten room with chairs for little people. This video on YouTube reports on this progress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35nRnbTGNTY
We would like to thank the donors for encouraging us to set our donation goal higher. It is clear that we need more money for our project. Because that’s true, we dared to take the next step to increase the donation target to EUR 20,000 in order to get closer to the village’s great desire to start repairing the badly damaged elementary school. Maybe with classrooms of one material each. Maybe with the students. This will require significantly more money, but we think and act in stages. Because without school there can be no relief for parents in the village and no return of families. It has now become obvious to us that there is hardly any paid work on site, so people need financial support so that they can take part in the other development of their village.
We also feel challenged to save the war rubble that is still usable for construction piece by piece and to take care of the lake, which is important for the village in so many ways.
What is truly unexpected and therefore gratifying is that HOPE HOME • НАДІЯ is quickly perceived as the center of a transdisciplinary network for the use of renewable building materials. We now have inquiries from all over Ukraine, from universities, volunteers, craft businesses and NGOs.
The village council in Pervomaiske appreciates our support and our empathy, and the experience that we not only make promises for an indefinite future, but also direct the memorandum into practicality, made them at first incredulous and now courageous. We followed his urgent call for help: Renewable energies in their entire meaning are needed there.
Thank you if you support us in this, and please share the call!
EVERY AMOUNT, small or large, HELPS!
A small unfortunate thing: we were unable to get GoFundMe to set the buttons to the sums we wanted, 10-20-50-100-200-500 euros, or not to display a “recommended sum” from you. Please don’t worry about this recommendation!
Those who decline the offered payment methods can also donate to Pervomaiske directly and without deductions:
Be an Angel e.V.
GLS Community Bank eG
Account: 1344103200
IBAN: DE13 4306 0967 1344 1032 00 | BIC: GENODEM1GLS
This video reports on the progress we have already made with your help.
Stand 20.1.2025, 2:16 Minuten, Sprache: ukrainisch
Mapping of Pervomaiske
Research Seminar Winter 24/25
The village of Pervomaiske in Mykolaiv Oblast is currently the focus of the HOPE HOME – НАДІЯ project, a pilot project for the ecological reconstruction of Ukraine. In the HopeHome seminar, students from the TU Berlin were involved in mapping the site for the first time in order to establish a basis for continuing the project and simplifying communication between project partners.
With: Bela Mohr, Karim Touhtouh, Malte Heesen, Moritz Henes, Sofi Halat
Natural Building Lab
Constructive Design &
Climate Adaptive Architecture
Technische Universität Berlin I Sek. A44 I room A 602 I Straße des 17. Juni 152 I 10623 Berlin
Fakultät VI I Institut für Architektur I T +49 (0)30 – 314 218 83 I M +49 (0)176 856 13273
www.nbl.berlin