Safe learning for children in war zones

A new school that opened last month in Ukraine’s second-largest city is only 18 miles from Russia – with only a five-minute warning of incoming missiles. Yet Kharkiv’s primary school 155 is also on the front line of innovative efforts to ensure that children in crisis-affected countries have safe access to education.

The school is the first of many to come in Ukraine that was built with permanent underground classrooms. On opening day in mid-May, a gaggle of third graders – who had never been in a physical school during two years of war – walked down 20 feet of steps into windowless but brightly lit rooms to be taught by their teachers.

“The children have dreamed of meeting their classmates,” one father told Deutsche Welle news media.

Now when air sirens go off, the students will not need to interrupt their studies by running to a bomb shelter. And their bunkerlike school will probably not be destroyed – as nearly 400 schools have been so far by Russian forces.

Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world, said Nelson Mandela, and Ukraine wants to make sure the next generation is prepared to keep the country strong and independent.

“The Ukraine war isn’t merely about soldiers defending their homeland,” wrote American reporter Tim Mak in the news blog Counteroffensive after visiting a temporary underground school in a Kharkiv subway station. “These kids are what those soldiers are fighting to defend.”

Ukraine’s efforts to offer online schooling for some 900,000 students has been admirable, according to Education Cannot Wait, a fund for providing education in emergencies and protracted crises. From repairing bomb-damaged schools to handing out devices for remote learning, the government has prevented significant learning losses.

“We have a unique chance, with global support, to make courageous choices in creating a new education system – one that is high-quality, innovative, secure, and European,” wrote Dr. Yevhen Kudriavets, first deputy minister in Ukraine’s education ministry, in the Kyiv Post.

In the world’s most stressed places, says Education Cannot Wait’s executive director Yasmine Sherif, ensuring a safe education for children allows them to “draw on their resilience, heal from their experiences, develop fully and to prepare their future and unleash their potential.” That’s especially true inside a solid and sunken bunker in a Ukrainian war zone.