Kyiv School No. 82 named after Taras Shevchenko is the leader in terms of the number of children who have returned to full-time education in the Shevchenko district of the capital. Here, all 34 classes go to offline lessons, because the new school shelter can accommodate 500 children and 67 employees of the educational institution.
The renovation of this shelter, which was previously a basement with a cloakroom, was carried out by the KSE Foundation thanks to the contribution of Dragon Capital. Together, we completed shelters in 4 schools of Ukraine! Shelters are arranged within the framework of the all-Ukrainian program of the KSE Foundation “ZAKHYSTOK: Safe Education”.
“Parents were afraid to leave their children at home and took them to school anyway – they thought it was safer that way. At that time, there was no shelter yet, so it was scary in the basement, the children had to get used to the old walls and poor lighting. Now the parents are very satisfied: both the children and the teachers are in decent conditions,” – says Nataliia Suroma, director of Taras Shevchenko Specialized School No. 82 with in-depth study of the English language.
The builders did a lot of work on the basement of the school: they poured a concrete floor screed, installed doors for emergency exits and bathrooms, treated all surfaces, painted the walls and installed lighting.
According to the director of the school Nataliia Suroma, it is not possible to continue a full-fledged educational process during air alarms due to the large number of students, but the shelter allows to provide schoolchildren with interesting leisure activities and to distract:
“We have internet in the shelter, we arrange viewings of educational films, and conduct tests. We initiate unloading games, there is chess, dominoes, children read books, because now there is good lighting here.”
The 82nd school is the very first alma mater for many outstanding graduates, including writer Oksana Zabuzhko and journalist Oles Buzyna. And the number of talented students at the school is only increasing – last year, eleventh-grader Anastasiia won 1st place at the All-Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences biology competition and received the presidential award! Two more graduates were awarded gold medals at the last bell this year. In addition, with the beginning of a full-scale war, the capital’s educational institution constantly helps wounded defenders who are admitted to the Kyiv military hospital. Teachers, students and parents join the actions of helping the Armed Forces of Ukraine with goods and finances.
Together with Dragon Capital, we continue to work to ensure a safe education for our children and aim to get tens of thousands more students back behind the desks.
Make your child’s school safer with the KSE Foundation! You can apply for a shelter by filling out the form at the link: https://foundation.kse.ua/en/safe-education. On the same page, you can make a charitable contribution to improve the safety of schools in Ukraine.