Ganna Lysakova's organization began in 2014, in the war's first year — a psychosocial support and physical rehabilitation project for front-line soldiers, based at the volunteer center of the 51st Mechanized Brigade in her hometown of Kovel, in Ukraine's Volyn region. In 2016 she registered it as the NGO “Zihrii Dushu” — “Warm the Soul” — and has led it ever since.
The numbers tell a decade of quiet, relentless work: 155+ psychosocial rehabilitation retreats for combat veterans, their families, and the families of the fallen; 30+ exhibitions of participants' work in Ukraine and abroad; and since the full-scale invasion — a focus on the families of fallen soldiers, especially widows and children, with psychological support, art therapy, and social adaptation for the displaced and those living with PTSD. In all: 350+ specialized programs, 70+ public events, more than 7,000 people helped — sustained for ten years by partners in the UK, France, Germany, the USA, Poland, Belgium, and Italy.
In 2025 she took the mission somewhere unexpected: the golf course. Her “Healing the Soul” program uses golf as psychological recovery, built on three dimensions — character, hope, resilience — and on the conviction that the women the war widowed deserve not just care, but leadership and a new community of their own.
Out of it came the Valkyries — Ukraine's first women's golf team of the families of fallen heroes. A participant in the Ladywoods and GolfMotion projects, she now brings the Valkyries' story — and their strength — to the world.
At an art-therapy forum in Pennsylvania in 2024 she became a member of the American Art Therapy Association, bringing modern art-therapy techniques home to her programs. Since 2019 she has also run — entirely as a volunteer — her own health-education course for teenagers and their parents, and is a member of Ukraine's National Association of Sexology and Sexual Medicine. Some of her hardest, least visible work is helping veterans rebuild intimacy and family life after amputations, PTSD, and everything the war took.
An entrepreneur — she runs the “Mandryky” catering service — and a mother of two. Piano, art therapy, and, of course, golf. This November she joins the delegation to Dallas and Washington, D.C. The road to Dallas →
