On February 24th 2022, 16-year-old Ania woke up and got dressed to go to her school in Oleksandria, in central Ukraine. But she would not go to school. Instead, she received a call from her grandmother who would tell her that her country had been invaded, and war had begun.
That same morning, Sofia – just 15 years old – was hurriedly packing what documents and belongings she could into suitcases. “I couldn’t understand why it had happened and how,” she says, “I couldn’t even realise that the war had started”.
Seventeen-year-old Valeriya was able to get to school, but there were no classes. “I was upset,” she recalls, explaining how her teachers simply told her to go home.
Twelve months later, and nearly a thousand miles away, Emma Maspero stands in a buzzing warehouse in Denmark – machines are whirring, forklift trucks are lifting cases upon cases of supplies, and assembly lines are filled with chatter as hands stuff items into boxes.
Maspero, the UNICEF Supply Division’s Senior Emergency Manager, is at their warehouse in the Port of Copenhagen. It’s the largest humanitarian facility in the world, spanning 20 thousand square metres and filled to the brim with supplies, machines, and workers.
It’s been a year since Russia invaded Ukraine; a year since millions were displaced from their homes, their schools, their livelihoods. As of January 2023, a total of 3,025 educational institutions have been subject to bombing and shelling. As many as 406 have been completely destroyed. That’s preschools, secondary schools, special education schools, and colleges. But more than that – for many that’s a place of structure, of safety.
Back in Copenhagen, stacks of ‘School in a Box’ are being made: sizeable aluminium cases packed tight with school supplies. Pens, pencils, exercise books – there’s even a tin of black paint for the teacher to transform the back of the box into a chalkboard. They’re shipped by UNICEF to crisis areas across the globe, for children who have been forced to leave their education. Today, they are being sent to Ukraine.
“It’s designed for 40 children for a period of three months – and one teacher – and it has all of the supplies necessary,” Maspero explains. “It really has the ability to set up a classroom under any circumstances.”
Once a child drops out … it’s almost impossible to get them back
For many girls leaving education in conflict, the odds are stacked against their return. Young girls like Ania, Sofia, and Valeriya can face the risk of early marriage, early childbearing, and family expectations to provide unpaid domestic support.
“That’s exactly what we can’t afford to happen,” Maspero is adamant, explaining that keeping schools open in any capacity during conflict is a crucial factor in keeping young girls in education.
“We need to keep girls in school because in many emergencies, once a child drops out … it’s almost impossible to get them back.”
According to UNICEF, 129 million girls are out of school globally, and girls in countries affected by conflict are more than twice as likely to be out of school than those living in non-affected countries.
School in a Box gives teachers and their students the opportunity to set up a classroom in any location and restore access to education as quickly as possible. There are locks on the case to keep supplies safe, and enough supplies to last them three months – often even longer.
It allows schooling to remain a structure in young people’s lives rather than be stifled by crisis, which Maspero believes is critical for their futures. Education supplies may not be in the first wave of aid being sent to crisis areas, she says, but they will follow soon after.
“[It’s] really important for their psychosocial wellbeing. Children need to be children, they need to be interacting with each other, they need the routine of a regular, normal day – and education helps give us that.
“Healthcare is very important to us, nutrition, safe access to water. But while those are life saving interventions, education is, for me, it’s life changing”.
She looks through the box, narrating the purpose of each item, and the items feel practically never-ending. Protractors, compasses, schoolbags, scissors, coloured chalk, rulers with magnifying lenses for visually impaired children – the list goes on.
Her favourite item, she tells us with a smile on her face, is the exercise book. They’re able to distribute them to every child, something for only them. She says there is an undeniable joy that each child has when being given something of their own, something so simple in an environment so turbulent.
“There’s a real sense of pride, and I’ve seen our School in a Box distributed … in Somalia, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan. There’s always joy when kids get their notebook.”
In Oleksandria, Ukraine
Valentyna is 57 years old, and has been teaching at Oleksandria Lyceum No 17 for 34 years. The same school that Ania, Sofia, and Valeriya were once separated from in 2022.
Despite hosting as many as 1,430 students, the school is forced to operate through blended learning, as their bomb shelter is limited to a capacity of only 500 children.
Recounting the first day of the invasion, Valentyna tells of how she was sat in her school with only three students who managed to make their way in. “I had no right to let them go home,” she says. All she could do was begin her class – Ukrainian Language and Literature.
Though soon enough, she was told she could send them back to their homes and families, as the reality of war raged around them.
“The first thing that we felt was emptiness,” she recalls. “We heard the sounds of explosions from somewhere, something was flying. Because we had read that war brought pain, fear, sorrow, and loss, it felt like something was taken away from our souls. I felt emptiness”.
Over the last 12 months, the city has seen thousands of Internally Displaced People (IDPs) arrive independently or on evacuation trains. Currently, there are over 11,000 IDPs – over a quarter of whom are children – officially registered in the city, with tens of thousands more using it as a transit point to move further West or abroad.
A Russian missile struck Oleksandria on the evening of April 15th 2022; the local aerodrome was hit.
Valentyna’s class has now been given UNICEF’s School in a Box, but the return to learning was not straightforward by any means. For some time, she says, the school did not open. And in spite of it eventually returning online, students continued to battle with a disconnect from their friends and environment altogether.
“Education is lifesaving!” says Niki Abrishamian, UNICEF’s Chief of Education for Ukraine. “Children need interactions with their peers as well as meaningful interaction with their teachers and parents. Combining this with the provision of the right learning tools and materials will facilitate their learning”.
Fifteen-year-old Sofia details exactly this, describing how she found distance learning impersonal and disconnected. “I wanted to come back to school, because it was easier to communicate with teachers and classmates so I could hear and understand them better”.
Abrishamian says over the last 12 months, there has been a great challenge in tackling the “constant interruptions in children‘s learning,” in Ukraine. Yet, in spite of this, UNICEF has “managed to create safe spaces for many children to be children, to feel secure, to have opportunities to interact”.
School in a Box is an opportunity to counter some of the chaos that continues to permeate the war-torn country, giving young people a chance to keep a hold of the community that schooling can offer.
As Valentyna pores over the collection of supplies in the box in front of her, with a room filled with children in their seats, listening, watching, and awaiting a new beginning in their education. She talks through each item as she looks through, from the posters, to the workbooks, down to the locks on the box to keep the supplies secure.
“These supplies in the classroom will make the work much easier,” she says. “There is stuff they can use more, like different compasses, rulers, and protractors. All this is a big help.”
How can I help?
To help UNICEF reach more children affected by crisis in Ukraine you can donate here. £25 could help provide emergency supplies like safe water, maternity kits and essential vaccines. £80 could help pay for school supplies to help at least 20 children continue their education in an emergency.
