“Today I follow the strength that was within me”

Growing Up in Wartime

More than 3.6 million children in Ukraine depend on humanitarian aid. Many have lived through violence, lost family members or had to leave their homes, and that leaves its mark on their mental health and development. School offers little stability: many schools are damaged or closed, lessons often take place online, and there are few chances to simply be with other children.

This is why the Ukrainian organisation Angels of Salvation opened a children’s centre in Dnipro in 2023, with LIBERECO supporting the project from the very beginning. The centre is a safe place where children and young people can learn, play, meet others and receive psychosocial support, from art therapy to help with schoolwork. One of the young people who found her way there is Oksana.

Oksana’s path to the centre

Oksana was 15 when she had to leave her hometown of Bakhmut. In Dnipro, she began a life she had not chosen. “I miss my life,” she says. “School, my friends, walking the dog, doing things with my brother.”

Oksana was very shy and spent little time with others. Her father signed her up at the children’s centre, where she joined a psychosocial support group once a week. Even getting there was a challenge: the first time, she got lost and was scared. But at the centre, she found what she had been missing: a calm, friendly atmosphere, young people in a similar situation, and no pressure.

Back at the centre, on the other side

Today, Oksana is in her second year of studying speech therapy at the National University in Dnipro. This summer, she returned to the centre, this time on the other side. She accompanied children aged four to seven as they played, made music and painted. “I wanted them to feel welcome and to know that nobody is going to judge them.”

Most of these children have never known anything but war. Oksana tells them how she felt as a child before the invasion and helps them see the good in their surroundings and in themselves. “Being at the centre makes me feel that I am in the right place.” For the children, she hopes the war will not shape their future and that they will believe in themselves. She herself would like to work at the centre one day.

“I never thought that one day I would tell my story to anyone, let alone to people abroad. I was such a shy child back in Bakhmut. Today I have a strong personality, and I owe that to the first sessions at the centre. From there, I followed the strength I already had within me.”

A centre to empower youth and children

Oksana’s story shows what the centre is meant to do. It does not only help children get through a difficult time. It helps them find their footing again, and sometimes, as with Oksana, pass that strength on to the next generation. In the current phase of the project, we continue to work with Angels of Salvation to improve the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people affected by the war, and to close the learning gaps the war has caused through targeted school support.