More than 200 students of the Hornostaipil Lyceum, bordering Belarus, have successfully completed the academic year in the school and are preparing to return to their desks on the first of September – the KSE Foundation charitable foundation made a comfortable shelter for schoolchildren thanks to the contribution of the MTI company (part of the MTI Group of companies).
The shelter at the Hornostaipil Lyceum became one of the first to be arranged within the framework of the all-Ukrainian program “ZAKHYSTOK: Safe Education” from the KSE Foundation. The shelter was completed in January 2023, so 212 schoolchildren and 30 young kindergarten students returned to safe classes immediately after the New Year holidays. This allowed graduates to successfully pass exams and enter universities and colleges. And the younger students were most happy about the opportunity to communicate with their peers again and attend clubs – the students of this lyceum develop local nature conservation: they plant trees, study forest ecology and participate in thematic competitions.
Raisa Lytvyn, director of the lyceum: “Before, our basement was in terrible condition. It was exactly a basement, not a shelter. And now everything is perfectly done just for us, so that it would be convenient for the students. Now there is light, the ceiling does not leak, the ventilation system is installed, all the walls are painted, there is no fungus on the surfaces, and windows were also installed in the room to make it safe. We put desks and chairs here, so the children can do their activities.”
The shelter at the lyceum was arranged for a comfortable stay for all students: the electrical wiring was completely replaced, emergency lighting was installed, the surfaces of two large rooms were sanitized, and the room was waterproofed. And the volunteers of the “B50 Hideout” project painted the white walls with bright abstractions.
The equipped shelter made it possible to restore safe education for children not only from the village of Hornostaipil, but also for 120 schoolchildren from the neighboring villages of Dytiatky, Zoryn, Fruzynivka, Straholissya and Gubyn, who come to the lyceum every day for lessons.
All these villages were blocked from the outside world after the start of the full-scale invasion, most families could not leave the area until the deoccupation of the Kyiv region.
“We were blocked from the world, there was no bread and light. No one could get to us, and we couldn’t get to either the district center or the regional center,” – says Lyceum director Raisa Lytvyn. Three of its graduates died after the Russian invasion, many others continue to defend the country. To help them, students and teachers are engaged in volunteering: they make trench candles, weave camouflage nets and even collected 8.5 thousand UAH to buy a thermal imager for the military personnel!
Despite all the difficulties of wartime, isolation and long-term distance learning, the students of this lyceum continue to win awards at competitions and Olympiads in biology and geography. And the children who were forced to leave their homes and found a new home in this village quickly find new friends at the Hornostaipil Lyceum and win competitions.
This lyceum is special. After the Chernobyl disaster, the school became a military hospital – it was here that people exposed to radiation were taken. So, in the end, the building was demolished, and the school was able to open its doors again in a new building only a few years later, in 1991. The year 2022 presented the lyceum with new challenges. Thanks to the joint work of the school staff, the MTI company and the charity foundation of the Kyiv School of Economics, Hornostaipil Lyceum was able to resume safe education this time as well.
Together, we are proud to be part of the history of this school and its talented students.
Make your child’s school safer together with the project “ZAKHYSTOK: Safe Education” from the KSE Foundation!
You can apply for a shelter by filling out the form at the link: https://foundation.kse.ua/safe-education. On the same page, you can make a charitable contribution to improve the safety of schools in Ukraine.