A book — we are currently working on — for anyone interested in the many keys to human well-being, and also for volunteers and activists, in both war and peace.
What’s in it for you?
1. About your emotional well-being:
It’s a scientific investigation searching for the hidden ingredients of a surprisingly high level of happiness, coming from a surprisingly unlikely place: wartime Ukraine. You can find keys in it to a better life — backed up by the opinion of various scientists and other experts who help us analyze the material we gathered in the field. It’s a practical ”cookbook” of well-being, useful even if you do not volunteer and/or have never been in a war and never want to be.
2. About the well-being of the world:
This book is also a blueprint, a how-to (and how-not-to) guide for future volunteers and activists in times of war or peace ahead of us.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is this helping Ukraine?
It makes the work of current and future volunteers more effective, and also recruits new helpers by shedding light on how many ways volunteering in Ukraine can be beneficial for almost all adults, potentially life-changing, and a lot of fun. (Yes, this last part may sound disrespectful, but the topic of why it is not is directly discussed in the book.)
When and how can I read the book?
Subscribe to our pre-order list HERE so we can send you a notification when the book is published. Most likely at the end of 2026 or the beginning of 2027 in English, and after that in Ukrainian and Hungarian.
What is the Ukraine Effect?
A surprising psychological phenomenon: many non-military foreign volunteers of wartime Ukraine experience such an unexpectedly drastic increase of their emotional well-being that it is worth the attention of modern behavioral science. It affects people coming from less happy but also very happy lives, and until now — despite bringing so astonishing increase in quality of life — remained hidden and unresearched under the well-known chaotic, bloody and somber cloud of war.
Can I participate in the project?
Most likely yes. Contact us HERE if you would like to try out working with us. In case you never volunteered in Ukraine you can still help in various small tasks during the process of creating the book, especially if your native language is English, Ukrainian or Hungarian. But if you are or were a non-military foreign volunteer in wartime Ukraine, then please contact us soon, we would love to talk to you either in person in Ukraine or East-Central Europe (especially Hungary), or online from any location.
Who are you, guys?
Patricia Lazar and Mark Antal, leaving behind psychology and robotics engineering ,we became a team of journalist and photojournalist, a married couple from Hungary.
How to contact you?
Write to us to pre-order the book, or if you have any questions, ideas, would like to talk to us, work with us or be involved in this project in any way: ukraineeffect@protonmail.com
Who are the scientists and experts you are working with?
Dr. Jozsef Laszlo, the principal of the Hungarian Journalist Academy, is helping us with practical advice, as well as one of the teachers of the academy, Beatrix Csaba. We will discuss the gathered material with our experts and scientists after we have conducted all the volunteer interviews (at least fifty), therefore the identity of them is not sure until we actually recorded the conversation with them. With some of them we already agreed, in some cases we know who we want to work with, and in a few topics we are still searching for our experts. Our goal is to have the gathered material analyzed by professionally respected, established, credible researchers, and other authentic, experienced specialists.
How can I help the project?
Many ways. Most importantly: spread the word, please! Share our introductory video on social media, or if you know those kinds of volunteers we are searching for, please tell them about this project, and that we are very possibly searching for exactly them. But — from reading and reflecting on parts of the material while we are working on the text to participating in voice-overs of videos — there are many small tasks by which you can help create and improve the book. And, honestly, there are the activities we have no idea yet that we will need help with, it will only turn out later, so a list of people we can contact when needed is something that could make this project much more impactful.
Why are you doing this, and why should I be involved?
We would like to help Ukraine by increasing the number, well-being and positive impact of current and future volunteers there. Also, helping volunteers and activists in general, people who would like to make this world better without monetary compensation, is a topic very close to our heart. The knowledge we can gather in this project, and share with as many people as possible, will be a timeless asset for human beings active in world-bettering anywhere on this planet, and for a long time. Lastly, researching the Ukraine Effect itself, and processing the gathered data by accomplished, credible scientist could increase the well-being of those too who never volunteered or participated in activism (yet).
Your involvement could matter. A lot. We will do our best to make all the tasks and activities fun for our helpers. But there is also the knowledge that changing the blueprint, the code that governs our matrix will have a real positive impact on immediate events, like the ongoing war in Ukraine, but it will most likely improve the life of many people, and the course of important issues in the future also, by improving the well-being, stress-resistance and efficiency of yet-to-come activists and volunteers who will work on those future issues.
What is the method you are using and how is it connected to science?
It’s called qualitative research. We do the footwork, gather the raw material
while following the rules of scientifically correct data collecting (for example, we don’t publish the important parts of the already recorded material until all the volunteer interviews are done). After that we share all the gathered material with several scientists and experts from different fields of mostly human behavioral science, so they can analyze the data, interpret and make sense of the findings from their unique perspective. At the end we are searching for answers to a few very practical questions, to gain tools for improving the everyday life of potentially all of us.
I am (or was) a non-military volunteer in Ukraine, are you interested in what I have to say?
Yes! Contact us please, HERE, so we can discuss further details.
Do you belong to an organization?
No, we are completely independent.
Who’s financing this?
Only us. We will look for sources, for accommodation and fuel costs, so we can come to Ukraine more often, and can do a better job; as well as to cover the many expenses of book publishing, but right now we spend as much as we can afford from our monthly income.
Are there bits I can already read or watch?
While gathering more material we are continuously publishing — at least one piece every few days — parts of the table of contents or a few paragraphs of some chapters, quotes from the volunteers, or from the experts as well as short videos from the interviews HERE.