This week a new school year has started in Ukraine. Almost 4 million Ukrainian children will be learning new knowledge, but many of them will not be in their native schools.
Almost 2,000 secondary schools in Ukraine remain destroyed, and the rest are under the threat of missile attacks every day. As a result, students are forced to travel to other schools, take classes online, or, as in Kharkiv, attend classes in the subway.
This is only part of the realities of life for Ukrainian children in times of war. A year and a half ago, they were forced into a situation where all ordinary things have to be done with fear, doubt and caution.
This should not be the case in the civilized world. The Ukrainian Reconstruction Fund wants a better present and future for Ukrainian children. That is why the head of the organization, Pavlo Kostyuk, appealed to caring people to make charitable contributions that will allow us to start making changes.
We publish it in full:
“503. So many innocent children’s souls have been taken by the war in Ukraine since February 24, 2022. These are all little Ukrainians who dreamed of growing up and learning, creating and loving, making friends, traveling and becoming champions.
Together with them, their parents and relatives lost the meaning of life, and Ukraine lost a part of its future.
6-year-old Elia from Avdiivka was about to start first grade, but her plans were cut short by a heart attack while she and her grandparents were hiding from shelling in the basement.
13-year-old Oleksandr Shpylevsky from Chernihiv was an advanced boy: he was interested in the crypto market, created NFT tokens, and wanted to develop his YouTube channel. But he didn’t have time, because he died during the shelling of an evacuation convoy.
Young boxer Oleh Vovk and his father were saving their neighbors’ house in blockaded Mariupol from fire when an enemy missile hit them. His mother found her son’s lifeless body among the burnt ruins.
We will never know who Serhiy Podlyanov from Vilnyansk could have become. The baby had only two days to live before a Russian shell hit the maternity hospital.
There are hundreds of stories like this, and the most sad thing is that with each new week there are more of them. There are more children who become crippled, who go missing, who are abducted and taken to Russia.
Knowing all these figures, I thought for a long time about what I could do to help. Stopping the war is not within my competence, and bringing children back to life is even less so. But what I really can do is to make sure that Ukrainian children, despite the war, do not lose the gift of God – their childhood.
The Ukrainian Reconstruction Fund was established a year and a half ago with this idea in mind, and it continues to work with it today.
When we gather humanitarian aid for hospitals, when we create projects for the reconstruction of schools and kindergartens, when we prepare programs for the development of sports and education in Ukraine, we do it to support the flower of the Ukrainian nation – its children.
Dear adults, listen to your heart and remember your childhood. It is almost no different from what Ukrainian children have now. Except for borders, time and circumstances.
So I will say this: the donation you can make today is not a donation to the Ukrainian Reconstruction Fund. It is your personal contribution to ensure that Ukrainian children have equal rights and opportunities with millions of other children around the world.
Believe me, they are worth it!”.
Head of the Ukrainian Reconstruction Fund
Pavlo Kostyuk
