Date: 09-08-2017

The Ukrainian Step by Step Foundation and UNICEF deliver training benefitting children in war zones

The Ukrainian Step by Step Foundation (USSF) and UNICEF present the results of their project “Kindergarten – environment friendly to a child”. Over 2500 pedagogues working with children in war zones were trained.

War and crisis, led to the displacement of large numbers of people and to worsening social and economic conditions in Ukraine. In the period December 2016-April 2017, the “Kindergarten – environment friendly to a child” project supported quality pre-school education in five regions impacted by the war: Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhya, Donetsk and Luhansk. The project shared knowledge and trained pre-school pedagogues and parents on the newest early child developments with the aim to improve the dialogue between parents, teachers and the administration of pre-schools.

Some project results:

  • 100 seminars were conducted, involving 2 614 pedagogues in 812 pre-schools
  • 57 national trainers were trained
  • 28  representatives of local education departments and In-Service Teacher Training Institutions provided methodological support to pedagogues of pre-schools and promoted the project’s best practices
  • 50 pre-schools became the focal point for the dissemination of the project’s best practices
  • 1159 pedagogues from 463 pre-schools received mentoring support.  

USSF hosted a conference to present the results of the project results on April 20-21, 2017 in Kyiv, Ukraine.

More than 90 people took part in the conference. Those include pre-school educators, parents, representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science, UNICEF, In-Service Teacher Training Institutions, education departments and experts.

Besides the results of the project, other issues were discussed at the event:

  • pre-school education in Norway: finding ways to support the development of children in different life situations
  • experience from Central Europe countries in solving crisis situations, particularly in areas of armed conflict
  • how to help children understanding the emotions of other children and how to deal with their own negative emotions through the use of the “Persona Doll” approach
  • children’s community development, problem solving and positive conflict resolution.

The conference was supported by UNICEF and by the Ministry of Education and Sciences of Ukraine.

Zorica Trikic, Senior Program Manager at ISSA, presented the ISSA Professional Learning Communities.