Children’s Refugee Center Chernivtsi

Student dormitories of The Polytechnical Institute in Chernivtsi, Ukraine have been turned into a Children’s Refugee Center since late February. Situated in Western Ukraine, the center has been accepting internally displaced families with children who need temporary or permanent shelter. The Employee Foundation has supported the center through a donation used to buy sports and arts equipment for the children.

Olha Zaslonkina, the wife of VELUX Ukraine employee Oleksandr Zaslonkin, is a psychologist and art therapist at the Chernivtsi Regional Ecological and Naturalistic Center for Student Youth Creativity where she’s been working for more than 14 years. Since late February, she has been volunteering at The Children’s Refugee Centre in Chernivtsi, helping children work through stress and anxiety. “We have weekly art-therapeutic classes where we use creativity to help the children express their concerns, learn to cope with anxiety and fill them with inner strength. The Center also has a pet contact site where everyone can come and spend time with animals to help relieve anxiety. Contact with animals and nature helps to stabilize the emotional state”, says Olha.

People living in the Center are internally displaced persons, mostly from Eastern Ukraine. Currently, there are 69 children aged 0 to 17 living there with their families. More than a thousand people have seeked shelter in the Center at some point during the past months. Some of them only stay temporarily, but the vast majority are families whose homes have been destroyed and have nowhere to return to. “Nobody expected a war, so we do not have specialized centres for internally displaced persons in our city. This function was mostly taken over by educational institutions - kindergartens, schools, colleges and university dormitories” explains Olha.

Although the local government, alongside some charity organisations, is providing help to the Center by donating food and medicine, there is still a lack of entertainment and educational tools for kids. “Children living at Chernivtsi Polytechnic College are of different ages, so they need art materials, stationery and sports games. For the most part they spend their free time indoors due to the lack of sports equipment and street games. The reduced physical activity has a negative impact on their health. Imagine children who do not play with a ball or ride a bike, because everything was left in a house now destroyed by the war…” Through the donation made by The Employee Foundation, the Center was able to buy different sports equipment and art supplies for children, to make their days feel a bit more normal and help them deal with the stressful situation. “With your support and help, children will be able to distract themselves from everything that is going on, and have a sense of a normal childhood”, says Olha.