Ukrainian schoolchildren go to school on September 1 – despite all the difficulties and threats of a full-scale war that lasts for more than 550 days. The safety of children at school is the main factor in the choice of the form of education by Ukrainian families: they choose between online learning, full-time offline studies and a mixed approach.
ADC Memorial advises parents and teachers to pay attention to the comic book, which tells children about safety rules in war zones using posters and videos. Wall posters based on this comic book are already hanging in thousands of schools, libraries and kindergartens across the country. Each school can print their own posters by downloading the design here.
For distance learning teachers use a 3-episode cartoon. Each episode reveals topics that are important for preserving life in a war zone: how to avoid stumbling upon a mine, how to properly seek shelter during explosions, and how to behave during an alarm.
“During the 2022-2023 school year, we received a lot of good feedback. Children liked the comic book character and the presentation of the material. For many regions of the country, rules of behaviour [in a war zone], the topics of danger to children caused by mines and landslides are more relevant than ever,” says Vera Gruzova, coordinator of the comic book distribution project in Ukraine.
In regions where schools do not open precisely because of their proximity to the front and constant mortal dangers, 40 thousand children were able to receive an individual comic book in the form of a booklet to view and read at home. On the map, you can see which schools have the comic and which institutions will have it in the near future. Most schools are covered in the following regions: Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Dnepropetrovsk and Sumy regions.
Since the comic and videos exist in five languages of national minorities in Ukraine (Ukrainian, two dialects of Roma, Crimean Tatar, Romanian, Hungarian, and Russian), even young children will be able to familiarize themselves with the material.
We also recommend a series of videos for children to raise their awareness of sexualized violence. The animated character briefly and simply tells kids about boundaries, intimate areas, how to call for help, how to recognize attempted violence, and how not to commit it yourself. We recommend these videos to children who have access to the Internet or are over 7 years old.
Watch video
Read the comic book in various languages