Desperate babushkas, victims of change
Babka is a diminutive for "babushka" or "grandma." This piece is one that really showed my students' natural skills in "thinking on the fly," which was very gratifying, because I made a special point of encouraging them to adapt their plans to fit the reality they encounter in the field.
This team set out to do a piece on how all the construction in Kiev is changing the face of this ancient city. But then they encountered this poor little old lady, crammed into an unheated room above the elevator shaft. She used to have a nice apartment in the building, but apparently her daughter lost it in some kind of a Ponzi scheme, and now she leads a desperate existence.
Thus, this piece evolved from what could have been a static and obvious piece about architectural change, to a heartfelt close-up of a real hot-button issue in Ukraine right now - there are apparently thousands of pensioners who lived their entire lives under the old Soviet system who are adrift in this new world, unequipped to deal with its complexities.