Learning through Play in Ukraine Response

• In Event: Learning through Play in Emergencies: Lessons Learned in Implementing Learning through Play in Acute and Protracted Crises

Proposal

Since 2014, the conflict in Eastern Ukraine has destroyed, damaged, or forced the closure of more than 750 schools, disrupting access to education for thousands of children, with many too scared to attend and distressed by the presence of armed soldiers in and around their schools. The escalation of hostilities since 2022 impacts the entire school-aged population in Ukraine due to the nation-wide closure of schools and education facilities. Attacks on schools in Ukraine are endangering the lives and futures of the country’s 7.5 million children with reports of children killed in the fighting and educational facilities being bombed across the country.

Children regardless of being residents, internally displaced, or hosts, have an urgent need of age- and gender-appropriate psychological first aid (PFA), opportunities for play, nurturing care as well as a return to safe learning. Parents, caregivers, facilitators, and teachers’ ability to teach is equally impacted by the lack of safety and loss of normalcy and will need coping strategies and tools. Play has had a crucial role in responding to these needs. We know that there is a link between play and children’s ability to manage anxiety in stressful situations, understand and explore their feelings, and provide a way to channel negative emotions and regulate them (Solis et al., 2019).

As part of a wider, holistic response to the crisis, Save the Children (SC) has focused on two key objectives aimed at mitigating long-term negative physical, psychological and cognitive outcomes for children:
Children affected by the conflict have access to psychosocial and play-based support in safe child-friendly settings
Children affected by the conflict, have access to safe and quality early learning opportunities

Working with national and local partners, SC has implemented a child-centred, play-based package of activities in Child Friendly Spaces, kindergartens, primary schools and within bunkers reaching approximately 25,000 children. These include Healing and Education through the Arts (SC’s expressive arts, play-based non-clinical MHPSS approach), broader MHPSS and child protection/ wellbeing activities, and playful Early Childhood Development resources, training and support in kindergartens, and bunker kits. The latter have been designed in collaboration with children in response to continued intense fighting and airstrikes across Ukraine, and the ensuing significant time spent in bunkers. They include a range of games, art supplies, books, toys and other learning materials aimed at supporting continued learning and MHPSS support.

In this presentation we will present findings from the interventions, based on mixed-methods quantitative and qualitative monitoring and evaluation studies. These will include children’s coping mechanisms in the face of crisis and uncertainty and their experience of play in this environment.

Author

• Romilla Karnati, Save the Children