How do we help the remaining Ukrainians? "War is war, but children need education"
by Cătălin Hopulele
The Bethany Foundation was to open in July in Iasi the first "Community Center for Children and Families in Ukraine". But refugee families began to come, by the dozens, as early as June, to the center, in search of a place to spend time with other people like them, who were fleeing to Romania by an unjust war. Children learn English and Romanian, run barefoot in the hallways, paint with their mothers, and families receive psychological, legal or social assistance. When the enthusiasm of the thousands of Romanians who set out for the borders in February to help their neighbors faded almost completely, the refugees found at the center on the outskirts of Iasi a trace of normality of life that their children could have had in the bomb-crushed cities of Ukraine.
A large gym-type hall with a parking lot of several hundred empty seats, except for a handful of cars scattered in front, most of them with Ukrainian numbers. The image of children playing with badminton paddles is seen distorted by heat waves raised from the asphalt, like a distant oasis in a hallucination in the desert.
In fact, the oasis does exist, and many Ukrainians initially seemed truly a vision. This corner of the Agora event center, on the outskirts of Iasi, was arranged by the Bethany Foundation in a "Community Center for Children and Families in Ukraine". An oasis in the country they left behind, chased by a bloody war and the rockets and shells falling on their and neighbors' blocks.
At the center in Iasi come mothers who have no one to leave their children with when they go to the jobs they found in the capital of Moldova. Children come who want to play and speak in the language of the country where they were born, but also to learn English and Romanian. But the great advantage of the center is the community it creates, says Anna, a 34-year-old Ukrainian woman from the Odessa region, settled for over 4 months in Iasi.
44 hours, the flight from Odessa to Iasi
Anna arrived in Iasi from Odessa, after a 44-hour journey that took her through the Republic of Moldova, with her mother and two daughters, the oldest of 10 years. They were all sleeping at home when the first missiles fell in Ukraine. They lasted in the Black Sea town for only a week, until they could see from the beach the dozens of Russian ships approaching from the horizon line.
"I decided, unfortunately, to leave my city. I didn't want to do that at all. I'll never forget how much we were scared of the ships, how we saw them from shore, and how we left. First I wanted to go further away from Iasi, but I met some good people here and I decided to stay," says Anna.
The woman gathers as she tells the story, under the smile still hiding the surprise of living for 4 months in another country. Anna, however, is glad that at the time of the war her husband was abroad, being a sailor on an oil tanker. Her contract has ended in the meantime, and for a month the family has been completed in Iasi. "That makes me really happy," says Anna, while spying through the glass walls on the class of Ukrainian children who are still struggling with English exercises.
"I don't know how to tell you: I met very nice people in Iasi, very good, but I felt the need to talk to my Ukrainians, to my people. We feel that the world no longer needs us, that we are strangers here, but Bethany basically told us 'Ukrainians, we are with you, we help you, you can stay here as long as you need'."
Refugees arrived at the center before the furniture
The center started operating at full capacity in July, even though the modular furniture ordered for each room has not yet arrived. But there were nearly 100 Ukrainians, mothers and children, who attended events week after week and throughout the month of June.
Mothers and children can participate in painting workshops, where they spend a few hours together, in English language classes for adults and children, held by Anna herself, who was hired as an English teacher in Bethany and works in this center.
Incidentally, one of the center's glass-walled offices is also a virtual classroom, where children and teenagers will be able to go to the online school organized in Ukraine. Bethany is going to buy laptops and tablets connected to the Internet, as well as all kinds of school supplies and educational materials.
Refugees who need to solve some of their administrative problems also benefit from free legal, social assistance, and now the organization is looking for a psychologist who will speak ukrainian native, because it is the only interaction that they do not want to mediate the translator hired full-time.
"There is a need for intimacy to psychological assistance, there must be interaction only between the beneficiary and the specialist, otherwise it becomes uncomfortable. But this month I hope to find a specialist from Ukraine and to be able to offer this type of service as well. For teenagers we have a collaboration with the Rotary club: I make meetings with them, boardgames, film evenings. The goal is to put them together, to interact with our teams of specialists. We are also preparing a summer school for them soon", says Diana Păiuș, manager at Bethany Social Services Foundation.
In parallel, Diana says that they are looking to hire a Romanian language teacher, a native Ukrainian speaker, in order to be able to better manage educational activities within the center in the autumn. One of the plans is to open an afterschool within the center, but they are also waiting to see what are the exact needs of the mothers who arrived in Iasi. Because beyond the trauma caused by the war and the day-to-day problems, including financial ones, mothers have had their entire support system destroyed.
"The biggest problem is the language barrier: few of them know English, that's why in our team we currently have a full-time translator and we will also need a part-time translator, who participates in all the workshops that involve interaction. But a major problem is related to single-parent families, and most of them are, where mothers want to go to work, but do not have solutions for integrating the child into school or kindergarten. They do not have a support network in Iasi, in Ukraine they had a family, a grandmother, a solution was found; but that will be problematic in the long run," explains Diana.
"We are especially glad that we have somewhere to leave the children"
There is also the question of trust: if at first the support of the Romanians was emotionally overwhelming for the refugees, now the emotions have tempered considerably, and the initiatives to support the Ukrainians have remained very few. Especially on the integration side. That is why Diana estimates that there will be activity at the center for at least two years, during which time she wants to turn the workshops into an option to spend time for children in a safe place, in learning spaces where knowledge can accumulate and where they can manage their emotions without fear.
Refugees who need to solve some of their administrative problems also benefit from free legal, social assistance, and now the organization is looking for a psychologist who will speak ukrainian native, because it is the only interaction that they do not want to mediate the translator hired full-time.
"There is a need for intimacy to psychological assistance, there must be interaction only between the beneficiary and the specialist, otherwise it becomes uncomfortable. But this month I hope to find a specialist from Ukraine and to be able to offer this type of service as well. For teenagers we have a collaboration with the Rotary club: I make meetings with them, boardgames, film evenings. The goal is to put them together, to interact with our teams of specialists. We are also preparing a summer school for them soon", says Diana Păiuș, manager at Bethany Social Services Foundation.
In parallel, Diana says that they are looking to hire a Romanian language teacher, a native Ukrainian speaker, in order to be able to better manage educational activities within the center in the autumn. One of the plans is to open an afterschool within the center, but they are also waiting to see what are the exact needs of the mothers who arrived in Iasi. Because beyond the trauma caused by the war and the day-to-day problems, including financial ones, mothers have had their entire support system destroyed.
"The biggest problem is the language barrier: few of them know English, that's why in our team we currently have a full-time translator and we will also need a part-time translator, who participates in all the workshops that involve interaction. But a major problem is related to single-parent families, and most of them are, where mothers want to go to work, but do not have solutions for integrating the child into school or kindergarten. They do not have a support network in Iasi, in Ukraine they had a family, a grandmother, a solution was found; but that will be problematic in the long run," explains Diana.
"We are especially glad that we have somewhere to leave the children"
There is also the question of trust: if at first the support of the Romanians was emotionally overwhelming for the refugees, now the emotions have tempered considerably, and the initiatives to support the Ukrainians have remained very few. Especially on the integration side. That is why Diana estimates that there will be activity at the center for at least two years, during which time she wants to turn the workshops into an option to spend time for children in a safe place, in learning spaces where knowledge can accumulate and where they can manage their emotions without fear.
"No matter how small the children are, they have experienced a major stress that feels like a trauma. It takes a safe space for them to interact with other children, with trusted people. That's our hope that we can offer them in the next two years, but that's only if things evolve for better or for worse," explains Diana.
And the greatest joy of mothers is the fact that they can sometimes take a few hours for them, in which they can suffer from homesickness or in which they can enjoy Iasi, without transmitting any negative emotions to their children.
"We are especially glad that we have somewhere to leave the children ... For us mothers, it is very important. There are mothers who want to work or those who lived in a family where someone always helped them, either husband or mother, but here they are alone with their children and sometimes they need to rest. They can bring their children here, we have 2 classes, they can go somewhere to clear their minds, especially if they always had help before," says Anna, smiling complicitly. "I know many women who need such a moment to clear their minds. I am one of them."
On one of the first days of the center's opening, a waterfall-like noise resounding in the hallway between the glass-walled offices struck Diana. There were dozens of children running barefoot on the tiles, sticking from side to side, laughing and yelling at each other. I also saw them in front of the center, shod this time, accompanied by two mothers and a volunteer. They had thrown their backpacks on the run like after a day of school, supported by the wall of the building, and played badminton, hopscotch, drew on the asphalt. It was their oasis of normalcy.
The schedule of the center is set periodically, but every day there are employees there who can support mothers with their problems. And at the end of all the events, the lunch is taken right in the event center, with the expenses incurred by the NGO from Iasi.
A medium-term plan for refugees made shortly after the invasion
I spoke to Diana at the end of February, in the first days after the start of the war in Ukraine, when the flow of refugees in Romania was in the order of tens of thousands a day and the authorities were outdated. Ever since then, Bethany has been among the organizations that have not run directly into customs with help, where there were dozens of other NGOs and hundreds of volunteers. In Iasi, they ensured the operation of a transit center for refugees who needed to stay only for a few nights in Romania, until they went on to other countries where they had relatives. There were over 300 people who slept in the spaces arranged by them.
But as early as March, he started devising a plan to answer the question: "what will those who, however, not only want to go through Romania do?". Especially children, who needed a safe environment, but also education. The question is not solved until the end even today, because since the autumn the Ministry of Education has not announced a concrete plan for the organization of classes taught in Ukrainian, so most mothers in Iasi will send their children for another year to the online school organized in Ukraine.
"We have been helped by our Partners Bethany in the US, who have a great deal of experience in interventions in Colombia and Ethiopia, where long wars are being waged. From their experience we expect the integration phase to last five years for everything that Ukraine stands for. Even if the military confrontation ends, there will be a need for reconstruction, you can not say that today peace is declared and the next day the people return," says Diana.
However, she also noticed an interesting trend among ukrainian mothers, beneficiaries of the center. A large part of them aim to stay for a longer period in Iasi, maybe even forever, especially when they think about how their children will be affected if they return to live among the ruins. "Two mothers wondered: 'what childhood can I give my little girl when all she will see on the street are craters, rubble and signs of bombing and war?' So some of them might stay, especially if they're integrated into the work and start to make a point here," manager Bethany said.
The Centre, aggregator and for smaller NGOs
The centre was intended to be an aggregator for good initiatives in society from the very beginning. So I met Lucian Grigorescu, the president of the Association Together for Miroslava, who became coordinator of educational activities at Bethany, at the beginning of June. He came with the volunteers he had attracted to his organization to help the Families of Ukrainians who remained in Iasi after fleeing the war. Today, Lucian walks among the little ones who learn English, helps the volunteers and marvels at the tranquility in which, for hours on end, their mothers and children paint in a room with glass walls, seemingly without any care in the world.
Lucian arrived at the center Bethany and Anna, who carefully follows a group of 8 Ukrainian children of no more than 10 years old who are struggling with translating words on the worksheets. "Dobre, dobre", she encourages them, before leaving them still bent over the sheets.
"The kids understand everything that's going on," he tells me, pointing to them. They realize that they cannot return home because of a war, and many have begun to realize, although they are only 5-6 years old, that what they knew as a house is likely to be destroyed. And that, at the moment, their life is in Iasi, in Romania, in most cases only with their mother.
"Everyone said that the situation is getting worse and worse, especially in the south of Ukraine. Perhaps many of those who left the center or west of the country returned home. But we, who are from the south, can't do that, it's the most dangerous place. I was in Odessa last month to get some papers, I stayed I think six days and it was awful. I do not know how people can live there: I did not sleep at all, the sirens ring all the time, and near the street where I sit there was an explosion, because they bombed a warehouse. I can't live like that, but most of all, how do I take my kids there? I have no choice but to stay here," says Anna.
"War is war, but children need education"
Anna, however, says that she will not leave Iasi until she returns home at some point. He has friends, Romanians and Ukrainians, he has a community and now they also have a place to gather and spend time together. The mothers with whom she spoke are ready to stay for a few years in Iasi, until the war is over, even if all they want is to return home. The problem is that many no longer have the money to stay so far away from home. And the thing that affects them the most is the education of the children.
"War is war, but children need education, they need to learn English, other topics such as IT, even the language Romanian, even drawing lessons are important to them, because here, at the center, they can talk to each other, they can interact. I encouraged my daughter to learn Romanian, she doesn't really want to, but I had her do it because I don't know what will happen tomorrow, let alone in the long run. I expect us to stay here for a year or maybe longer: I want to, but I don't think the war will end in a year," says Anna.
So the young refugee's eldest daughter will be studying at her school in Ukraine this year, online. But Anna is preparing to put her children to school in Romania, studying in Romanian, if their future will be linked to Iasi.
The article was produced within the Journalism Scholarships on Philanthropy, a program developed by the Association for Community Relations and supported by Lidl Romania.
The article can also be read on the website of Ziarul de Iași.
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