For Jewish News magazine December 2024
We are inside what is, for me, unfamiliar territory — a boxing gym in the Sheffield suburb of Darnall, home to a large Muslim population. About 30 small boys (and one little girl dressed in Barbie pink from head to toe) are variously jumping in star shapes, practising sit-ups, or vigorously hitting some of the punchbags suspended from the ceiling.
There’s another group of slightly older teens in the corner, mooching about in time-honoured teen fashion.
Then the man they’ve all been waiting for strides in. Oleksandr Pohodin, whose gym this is, is 34, and a former prizewinning boxer in his home town of Chernivsti, south-west Ukraine. He simply oozes charisma and all the kids, young and old, pay attention as he tells them what the training programme will be for the night.
As for the fathers who hang around the doors of the gym — they are one big grin of admiration. Yes, one father tells me — they love Pohodin and what he is doing for their sons (and a couple of daughters, too).
The journey from Chernivtsi to Sheffield is not a straightforward one, but it has taken place with the help of World Jewish Relief (WJR) and its groundbreaking STEP programme.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, millions of Ukrainian civilians were forced to flee their homes. Many of them came to Britain, and it’s estimated that by March 2023 there were 170,000 Ukrainians who had arrived in the UK in this new wave of immigration, joining a robust Ukrainian population who had been here for many years.
But the new arrivals had huge problems with which, in many cases, the government farmed out to specialist agencies to tackle. Foremost among these difficulties was limited English proficiency, in turn preventing access to decent employment and the ability to re-settle in Britain.
World Jewish Relief is, of course, the successor organisation to the Central British Fund, which brought large numbers of Jewish people, children and adults, to the UK as they fled the horrors of the Holocaust.
Present-day WJR has built on its historic work of helping people in distress, but always in the most practical way possible. Recognising the challenges of absorbing the Ukrainians successfully, in August 2023 WJR launched its STEP Ukraine programme, which aims to provide intensive English language and employment training to Ukrainians fleeing conflict.
STEP Ukraine, run by WJR in partnership with the British Council and funded by the UK government, has become Britain’s largest employment programme for Ukrainians displaced by war. In one year, more than 10,000 people have taken part in the programme, and around 1,000 of them have already secured meaningful employment.
Crucial to the programme is improving English language skills and
Oleksandr is one of the many successful STEP Ukraine graduates. He received three months of English sessions, giving him the language skills and confidence he needed to start his own business here in the UK. He also had a dedicated employment adviser, who supported him in the development of his business plan.
By coincidence, Oleksandr’s home town of Chernivsti was once known as Chernowitz and around a quarter of its pre-war population was Jewish. All of Oleksandr’s father’s schooolteachers were Jewish and so he is familiar with the community.
Oleksandr has lived in Britain for just over two and a half years. He is married with four children ranging in age from five to 15 — and when we met his wife was expecting their newest child. He wasn’t simply a boxer in Ukraine, although the country has become famous for producing world-class fighters.
He was a prize-winning boxer, winning 126 out of 149 fights. But latterly, besides having his own gym in his home town, he had a degree in political science and worked in government, as the director of sports of all kinds and activities for young people in the region, which, though it comprises more than a million people, is yet the smallest region in Ukraine. As we speak, his work with young people makes complete sense: he has a natural affinity with children and teenagers, understanding how to build their confidence and encourage them.
On our way in to his gym he stops the car to speak to a young boy of about 10, dressed in traditional white and clearly not headed for exercise. Why, Oleksandr asks the boy, was he not coming to training? The boy wriggles, and then says that his father wanted him to go to the mosque that evening. Oleksandr nods and then says, ok, go to the mosque tonight, but I will want to see you Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, right? Of a certainty, the boy will be there. Some nights, Oleksandr says, there are as many as 40 children and a further 30 teenagers, so popular are his classes.
Sheffield and Ukraine were already linked, long before the war. The Yorkshire city has been twinned with the city of Donetsk, also a steel town, since 1956. Oleksandr and his family lived a comfortable life in Chernivtsi, (his wife was director in an insurance company, he had the government job, his gym, and work promoting professional boxers), but as Russia began to attack all parts of Ukraine, the raids centred on the local airport — just 100 metres from the family’s apartment building, way too close for comfort.
“My wife started to have panic attacks when the sirens went off,” Oleksandr tells me. Sometimes there were alarms two or three times a night and they would have to grab the youngest child, then aged nearly three, and rush for shelter together with the other children.
At this point the couple decided it was time to remove themselves — even if that were to be a temporary solution. Oleksandr has a strong social media presence, and he saw the Homes for Ukraine programme advertised online.
He began trying to source a new location for his family, initially in London — he hadn’t thought of Sheffield at that point. He began a successful online conversation with people in London, but the plan fell through when the potential British hosts decided to offer a home to Ukrainians who were more strongly under attack than Oleksandr and his family.
He was exempt from army service because he had more than three children, but shops and businesses in Chernivsti began to close, and, with no state benefits, the couple had to sell their car to have something to live on. Leaving Ukraine became much more pressing.
Oleksandr had already — with the help of someone in the UK — completed the necessary paperwork to arrive in Britain, and so the family left Ukraine and went to Sheffield.
Both he and his wife took jobs way below their skill set when they first arrived. She began working as a cleaner, while he volunteered at Sheffield City Boxing Club, where the head coach was Brendan Warburton, awarded the MBE in 2022 for his work with disadvantaged young people.
Warburton encouraged Oleksandr, giving him cleaning and security work, and doing some coaching. Right from the first the young Ukrainian told Warburton: “If I stay, I want to open my own academy”.
But he knew he couldn’t do anything without improving his English — and that’s where STEP Ukraine came in. Three months of intensive lessons have made Oleksandr confident enough to open his own gym in May 2024. If his English is not yet top notch, it’s certainly good enough for him to make himself understood by the hero-worshipping Darnall kids who throng the gym. STEP Ukraine also showed Oleksandr how to create a business plan and has given him a mentor to help him launch his training academy. Warburton helped him buy some of the equipment.
In an ante-room of the gym sits a member of the Sheffield Jewish community, Dr Maurice Mann, who provides the constant medical checks necessary for the trainees. He tells me: “Professional boxing is show business with blood”.
Few, if any, of the little children crowded around Oleksandr Pohodin are likely to become professional boxers. But they will undoubtedly benefit from his calm leadership and his determination to do well in Sheffield. His is an unexpected success story in the fall-out from the war in Ukraine — and the human face of World Jewish Relief’s work.