Thanks to the contribution of PUMB, a consolidated lyceum of the Buchanskyi district in the Kyiv region, which survived the occupation and destruction, received a comfortable shelter which was equipped within the framework of the all-Ukrainian program “ZAKHYSTOK: Safe Education” from the KSE Foundation.
Thanks to the financial support of the bank, the school was able to resume offline education, so 252 school children of the Chervonoslobidskyi lyceum were well prepared for the final exams, and the parents of 19 children from the kindergarten, operating on the basis of the school, are taking their children to the educational institution again every morning.
The basement of the lyceum was cleaned of fungus and waterproofed so that the shelter would no longer suffer from dampness. A concrete floor screed was poured, a high-quality ventilation system was installed, all surfaces were painted, doors and two toilet cabins were installed.
“If there was no proper shelter, we would not have offline studying! Thanks to the charitable foundation and PUMB, all 252 school children together with the teaching staff can be safe at the same time. For now, the children in the shelter are only playing and talking, but soon we will connect the Internet and continue the educational process even during air alarms. The parents of our school children are especially very satisfied with the shelter,” – said Mykhailo Shulha, director of the Chervonoslobidskyi lyceum.
During the occupation of part of Kyiv region, it was the Chervonoslobidskyi lyceum of the Makariv settlement community that provided shelter for refugees from neighboring villages and the occupied territories, and was a humanitarian aid headquarters – more than 1,000 people were hiding from the enemy here.
“When it all started, all the residents of our village and the neighboring residents stayed in our school’s basement for a month. Here we connected the generator, cooked food using school products. «Grad» systems stood here, the front line was near us, combat operations were taking place,” – the school director Mykhailo Shulha tells us.
Mykhailo became the director of the Chervonoslobidskyi lyceum in 2008. Since then, the school has acquired the status of a consolidated institution and now educates pupils from 9 surrounding villages – school children are taken to lessons by a special school bus. The lyceum was noted for pedagogical innovations, and in recent years, an after-school center was also opened here – 17 different extracurricular clubs and even a branch of the music school.
After the liberation of Kyiv region, despite the broken windows and doors, the lyceum remained a place of refuge – now for the children of immigrants, whom the school gladly accepted to study.
Today, most of these school children have already returned to their own schools after vacating their homes. However, six students are still studying at the Chervonoslobidskyi lyceum.
One of them is Dania.
“Dania came to us with his mother from the occupied part of Kherson. They settled with the eldest son of the family, Dani’s brother – he already lived in our village for a long time, and was a part of the local territorial defense. But, unfortunately, he died at the hands of the enemy. He came across a russian tank, and they shot him right near our village,” – says Mykhailo Shulha.
The lyceum met the full-scale invasion with big development plans. However, it was forced to temporarily replace them with humanitarian work and recovery after an enemy attack. Now, the school was able to return to its plans thanks to the equipped shelter, which makes it possible to continue offline studying.
“We have very talented children studying here. Being able to provide them with secure offline studying is very important. Our graduate Mariana Lopata, passed the independent external evaluation in the Ukrainian language with 199.5 points! She won the Petro Yasyk native language connoisseur competition and the Shevchenko student and creative youth competition, as well as the prize-winner of the physics and Ukrainian language and literature Olympiads in the Kyiv region. She is a very smart girl, and we are very grateful for the opportunity to continue teaching all our pupils,” – says Mykhailo Shulha.
We will remind you that thanks to PUMB, the KSE Foundation team was able to return almost 800 children to high-quality full-time education!
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.