So they invited their friends, who invited their friends and a group. But there were so many places that needed help. LONSDORF: This all started with a group of friends who went to help a different village in the spring. MARINA HREBINNA: The scale of destruction - it is really huge. Marina Hrebinna is one of the organizers. That's the idea behind this whole event, put on by a group called Repair Together. LONSDORF: Listening to music, she says, helps push those feelings away so they can work. VIKTORIA SEETOVSKA: We all feel anger and a lot of destructive emotions. She says this festive atmosphere is necessary. LONSDORF: Twenty-year-old Viktoria Seetovska brings over a bucket she's filled. ROMAN TARASIUK: Volunteering in Ukraine - it's become a part of our everyday life. He's wearing overalls and a bright blue shirt, his long hair pulled back in a ponytail. Twenty-seven-year-old Roman Tarasiuk shakes his hips on top of a trailer as he empties buckets of debris to be hauled away. One woman cuts through old pipes with a power saw. They rhythmically sway and shuffle to the music. LONSDORF: The kids Hanna is referring to are the dozen or so 20- and 30-somethings clearing away the rubble. H YURCHENKO: (Through interpreter) I came to this cleanup by myself, but I'm just so grateful for these kids. This is the small village of Kolichivka in northeastern Ukraine, which was under heavy attack in the early weeks of Russia's large-scale invasion.

LONSDORF: On the 7 of March, she says, she watched as not one but several rockets hit her home. She can't rebuild until it's been cleared. Hanna hands apples to the workers shoveling piles of debris into metal buckets, clearing away the destruction so that the house can someday be rebuilt. It's a grim setting, but the mood is light. She walks around what was once her home, now not much more than a foundation littered with broken brick and shards of glass. It's a drizzly afternoon on one of the first cool days of fall. KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: Sixty-six-year-old Hanna Yurchenko carries a basket full of apples freshly picked from the trees next door.

War is awful, but war cleanup - one grassroots organization in Ukraine is trying to make it fun by bringing young people from the cities into villages destroyed by fighting.

Pysanka by Hanna Yurchenko