Olga Hrinenko came to the Czech Republic from Mykolaiv in March 2022. Together with her daughter, she settled in the small village of Černošice near Prague. A friendly Czech family gave her the entire floor of their private house. A year later, the owner of the house said that he helped as much as he could and asked themto vacate the house.

Olga went to Kolín,one of the smaller industrial towns in the Czech Republic, thinking that housing would be cheaper there than in Prague, and that it would be possible to find a job faster, because there are many factories in the city.

She got a job at a factory producing aluminum cans for aerosols. Her task is to spread them evenly on the pallet. For Olga, this is a serious downshift. In Ukraine, before the war, she worked as a production-preparation engineer at a turbine manufacturing plant in Mykolaiv.

Olga admits that as a child she never dreamed of being an engineer.She wanted to be a teacher. But now she modelsher plans for a future within engineering.

"I plan to stay in the Czech Republic, because the security situation in the Mykolaiv region is just difficult right now. Of course, I'm not going to put cans on a pallet all my life. I want to grow to the position of an engineer. For this I need to have a good level of Czech and English. I am studying them both now. I would also like to take courses that teach the programs that are used in Czech factories," says Olga.