Meet Vasyl Bilohura

[ topic ] Education

With the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Chernihiv has been constantly under Russian shelling. This has severely affected the educational infrastructure. In 2023, the city joined the Swiss-Ukrainian DECIDE project, which supported the physical reconstruction of educational institutions and projects focused on children’s development, well-being, and future. In particular, they managed to renovate shelters in five schools and organize indoor learning spaces for students to continue their education even during air raid alerts. Additionally, a career guidance program was launched, along with an initiative to develop civil activity among schoolchildren and to support student projects on improving educational spaces.

The restoration continues, as many buildings in the city still require reconstruction and innovative shelters. While much work remains, local authorities remain optimistic. With the support of the Swiss Embassy, they are confident that together they can make things better than they were before.

For me and my team, the most important thing is to act with maximum efficiency and benefit for the children, regardless of their status, educational institution, and who their parents are. We must create completely equal opportunities for all students.

Clearly, our lives have changed since February 2022. From the very beginning, Chernihiv was constantly under heavy shelling, and the blockade lasted 37 days, up until the beginning of April. No one was prepared for this to happen, and for how quickly events unfolded, so the decisions were made intuitively, based on feelings and the needs at the moment. Despite the stress and fear, people organized in places where it was convenient to gather, and primarily those were educational institutions.

Most of them were centers for safety and mutual aid in the city, as people found shelter there. For a long time, Chernihiv was without heating, electricity, water, and communications. Hardly anything was working, but people were able to get food, clothes, and medicine in educational institutions, and some even organized activities and lessons for children. In most institutions, the organizational role was taken by the Heads — they stayed there every day and lived with other people in the basement.

We understood how much the city residents needed our support at that time. Despite the difficulties, we organized the delivery of food and medicine to shelters and maintained communication between city services. Even the fact that garbage trucks kept coming and doing their job despite the risk gave people hope and belief that life was going on and the city was holding on. It was important to prevent panic from spreading and causing social chaos. And taking a look back, I can see that we managed to do that.

Answering the question, “Why did you decide to stay in the city despite everything?” Vasyl just said, “How could I leave everyone?”.

Margarita Kuliieva

Two schools in Chernihiv were completely destroyed by Russian missile strikes — leaving no chance for restoration. This photo shows one of them.

The city suffered enormous destruction during the blockade days. 80% of the educational infrastructure was damaged, including 27 out of 34 schools (two completely destroyed), 37 out of 52 kindergartens, and all five vocational education institutions. Water, gas, and electricity supplies were cut off. Everything that is considered normal for the functioning of a city in peacetime was destroyed by the enemy. Their goal was probably to take the city at any cost. Through joint efforts, however, we prevented this from happening.

Online education was resumed in April, as it was important to establish contact with children, find out how they were doing, and restore a sense of “peaceful life.” But it was also necessary to react swiftly so that adults could return to the city and be engaged in its restoration. Most of them have children, so our priority was to create conditions for educational institutions to operate in their usual format.

In the summer of 2022, we organized summer clubs where psychologists and teachers worked with children to gradually return them to normal life. At the same time, we equipped and repaired shelters that had previously been used as storage facilities. In fact, to resume in-person learning, we had to prepare shelters in educational institutions and rebuild what had been destroyed. All this was despite a lack of funds and tight deadlines.

We couldn't have done it without the outside support. In August 2022, we opened the first kindergartens, and on September 1, we opened 22 mixed-format schools in Chernihiv. We continued the restoration, and by the end of the school year, 29 schools were up and running. Currently, only one school is working remotely due to the lack of shelter facilities.

Chernihiv joined the Swiss-Ukrainian DECIDE project in 2023, and I am glad to have this opportunity to work together. We have received both financial support for reconstruction and assistance from experts in developing strategies for institutions and setting up a care council.