The strain on the faces of mums and teachers shows, but they hold it together for the preschoolers

Hers is just one of the thousands of horrific personal stories of women and children who have sought help and refuge across the region. Mums come in for their children and then find solidarity in others their age. They cry and laugh and form friendships out of extreme hardship. Some are now widows. Some are victims of domestic abuse.

Anna says her children have had to become her focus, but when Sergiy went to school this year she knew her youngest son needed help. Finding this centre was like a “reply from the universe”, she says. It has provided a safe and caring place both for her and Dima.

“The children work it out even if you don’t speak to them about the war directly,” she says. “Things are no longer the same, but he likes it here very much … and the process of socialisation has helped him.”

Centres such as these can cater for only a handful of children a day for sessions that include speech therapy, English, art therapy and creative classes. Registration expires within moments of sessions being announced on local social media channels. They can never cater for the demand.

Those who fled their home regions or to neighbouring countries such as Moldova, Romania or Poland feel even more disconnected from friends and family. Children still in Ukraine are often stuck with parents who keep them at home for fear of missile strikes.

Andrey, is a 55-year-old grandfather from Melitopol, near Zaporizhzhia, who fled with his wife, daughter and grandson when Moscow’s forces took control of his home town. The town is in ruins, and while he hopes to return, for now, the focus is on the family.

“My grandson, when he hears the sirens he does not cope well,” he says. “He doesn’t sleep at night either – he has become very nervous. And that has affected the adults; it has caused huge stress on us all.”

The Russian invasion has forced millions to flee and nearly 4 million people are internally displaced across Ukraine – about a million of whom are children. More than 6 million are living as refugees abroad. Prolonged displacement has pushed many to the brink after going without income for months.

World Vision has reached more than 1.6 million people affected by the war in Ukraine – including more than 772,000 children. The organisation estimates there are 14 million people requiring the urgent attention of organisations, donors and local groups working with the government. Its centres will struggle to stay open in the months to come unless $US40 million ($61 million) can be found before funding agreements expire.

Daniel Wordsworth, chief executive of World Vision Australia, says safe spaces like these work on many levels. The veteran aid worker, who established the charity’s response in the early days of the war, says the story of the children here can’t be forgotten.

“Adults respond to the event and children respond to how the adults respond to the event,” he says. “A children-friendly space is a much more powerful thing than a person imagines. Having a group of mothers in a room next to a group of children is fantastic for them. They love it, they need it.”

Wordsworth and World Vision staff who have just spent a week in Kyiv and Dnipro will fly to Canberra on Wednesday to brief MPs on the latest from their week on the ground in Ukraine.

Yulia Sporysh, the founder of NGO Girls, which runs several safe spaces for children and women, talks so passionately about her work that she often forgets to tell her own story. On the morning of February 24, 2022, she watched the aerial battle from her backyard in Irpin as Russian forces took the Hostomel airport, just 10 kilometres away, on their way south towards Kyiv.

“Until then, we couldn’t believe that such war could happen in the 21st century,” she says. “But after seeing it first-hand, my husband and I decided to leave Irpin. We have three children, so we packed the essentials and relocated at first to western Ukraine and then to Poland.”

She says that while much of the international focus has rightly been on the brave efforts of Ukrainian armed forces, more than 30,000 of whom have been killed, more attention must be paid to the women and children living in stressful war conditions.

Her organisation had already begun providing humanitarian aid while Irpin was still occupied, delivering it to the least accessible areas of the Kyiv region. She says volunteers sometimes traced the footsteps of the Russians who were destroying Ukrainian villages, including committing atrocities in Bucha.

“Then I started receiving calls that there were many raped women and girls who needed help. It wasn’t as much about medical aid, but primarily about psychological support,” she says.

Loading

Sporysh, honoured in Germany earlier this year with a prize for her humanitarian work, says the educational losses experienced by Ukraine’s youth were enormous. The country’s Education Ministry estimates about half of 4.1 million school-age children attend classes in person, almost 1 million are enrolled remotely from abroad or in safer parts of the country, and another 1 million have some in-person schooling combined with virtual classes.

But Sporysh says this does not consider preschoolers, who are losing vital years of their childhood development.

“Children, eager to play offline with their peers, must relearn how to communicate and make friends,” she says.

“In our child-friendly spaces, working across Ukraine, there are queues of children waiting for arts or sports classes and group meetings with their peers. Socialisation is crucial for children as it helps them cope with the traumatic events happening daily around them.

“All Ukrainian children are affected by the war, no matter how close their region is to the war zone. They all need offline communication and a happy childhood.”

Eight-year-old Varvara fled her home in Berdiansk not long after the Russians took the port city on the country’s south-east coast in February 2022. With her mother and younger brother, she first went to Zaporizhzhia and then to Dnipro.

She misses her friends, community and, in particular, the three-storey doll house in her bedroom. She’s doing her schooling online and longs to go back.

“The adults here are fun to be around,” she says. “I like the games we play and the activities.”

Varvara watched the adults come one by one to speak with the visiting Australian entourage and volunteers to tell her story. She’s asked at the end of our chat if there’s anything else she wants to say.

“Please support Ukraine every time … don’t forget us,” she says. “And I wish for you all to be happy all the time.”

She waves the visitors off as they leave. “Don’t forget us,” she says with a smile. How could you?