Schools in Ukraine, where the military invasion continues, started a new school year this month, but about one-third of all school-age children are unable to attend school due to damage to school buildings and lack of safety. Meanwhile, in the suburbs of the capital Kyiv, a local charity has set up a new air-raid shelter, and face-to-face classes have resumed, and children are showing good health at school.
According to UNICEF = United Nations Children's Fund, in Ukraine, 3.1 million people, or about one-third of all school-age children, are unable to attend school due to the destruction of school buildings and the lack of air defense shelters, and are forced to teach online, and how to prepare the learning environment is an issue.
In Hostmeli, near Kyiv, a charity organization spent about six months rehabilitating a destroyed school building and setting up an air-raid shelter to resume face-to-face classes.
The shelter is covered with a 150-centimeter-thick concrete wall reinforced with iron and is built with earth to protect children from attacks.
It has an area of 25 square meters and can evacuate up to 40 children at a time.
Attention is also paid to the design, with pictures of animals and books on the walls so that children can relax as much as possible in the event of an evacuation.
More than 6 students between the ages of 17 and 100 attend this school, but since the number of people who can evacuate to the shelter at one time is exceeded, they are divided into two shifts for each grade level.
The construction cost was about 2 million yen in Japan yen, and there was also a donation from the Japan.
Oleksandr Kajal, president of the charity that set up the shelter, said, "Children are our future, and seeing their smiles makes us happy, and we believe that our activities will give them that smile."