Biography – Mykola Yurchenko

Mykola Yurchenko

Year of birth: 1968
City of birth: Lviv, Ukraine
Origin: Servitka Roma
Education: Higher technical education (Lviv Polytechnic Institute)

Main areas of activity: development of Roma youth and education, preservation of historical memory, human rights protection, interregional cooperation.

Key contribution: founder of one of the first Roma organizations in Lviv, “Ternipe” (1999); first in the region to organize the systematic collection of testimonies from Roma genocide victims; initiator and organizer of innovative educational programs for Roma youth, including internships in government bodies and the creation of educational cartoons in the Romani language.

Impact: became one of the “pillars” and founders of the all-Ukrainian Roma movement, uniting activists from different regions; created a powerful educational direction, proving that educated youth are the key to changing stereotypes; his human rights activities following the attack on a settlement in Lviv (2018) drew international attention to the problem of hate crimes in Ukraine.

“The main thing is that you are united… You must communicate, and even encourage those people who you see have an education, have potential, and can help with something. Gather with such people, communicate, and perhaps in the future, they will be your comrades.”

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Biographical Information

Mykola Yurchenko is one of the founders and ideologists of the modern Roma civil society movement in Ukraine, a leader from Lviv who has dedicated his activities to youth education, the fight against discrimination, and the preservation of historical memory.

Early Years and Upbringing

Mykola was born in Lviv into a family of settled Servitka Roma who moved to Galicia from Pavlohrad (Dnipropetrovsk region) after World War II. His father worked as a driver, and his mother was a homemaker. Unlike many Roma families of that time, his family already had educated people — aunts who held managerial positions in a factory.

Mykola Yurchenko became one of the few Roma of his generation in Lviv to obtain a higher education, graduating from the Lviv Polytechnic Institute. It was this experience, in his words, that opened “another world” to him and became the main impetus for his public activities, sharpening his sense of injustice due to the treatment of Roma as “second class.”

Becoming a Public Figure

In the late 1990s, Mykola Yurchenko met other pioneers of the all-Ukrainian Roma movement — Volodymyr Zolotarenko, Fedir Andrash, Anatoliy Kondur, and others. This acquaintance determined his future path. He joined their first large-scale initiative — collecting testimonies from victims of the Roma genocide. Together with Fedir Andrash, he traveled through Western Ukraine (Lviv, Chernivtsi, Khmelnytskyi, and Volyn regions), searching for survivors, completing questionnaires for them, and transferring the data to the “Mutual Understanding and Reconciliation” fund to obtain victim status and compensation.

This work became the basis for the creation of the youth non-governmental organization “Ternipe” (“Youth”) in Lviv in 1999.

Activities and Contributions

The organization’s initial activities were focused on historical memory, but later the main priority became education and expanding opportunities for Roma youth. Mykola Yurchenko organized free English courses at International House and computer courses in Lviv. His innovative projects included internships for Roma students in local government bodies, which broke stereotypes both among officials and within the community itself, and the creation of a series of educational cartoons in different dialects of the Romani language, which received approval from the Ministry of Education.

An important area of his work was human rights protection. After the brutal attack on a temporary Roma settlement near Lviv in 2018, which resulted in a death, Mykola Yurchenko became one of the main public spokespersons on the case. He actively worked with law enforcement agencies, human rights defenders, and the media, drawing attention to the problem of hate crimes.

Mykola Yurchenko is one of the most authoritative leaders, who has nurtured a whole generation of young Roma activists through his “schools for Roma activists” and educational projects.