Children are the future of Ukraine, it is important to prevent any interruptions in education, Director for Neighborhood the Directorate General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO) at the European Commission Andreas Papaconstantinou stressed.

“From a general perspective, the European Union is the only top donor in the world that dedicates 10% of overall humanitarian funding to what we call Education-in-Emergencies. Why do we do that? Because we want to ensure that no generation is lost. We want to ensure that the human capital in the countries we invest in through our programs is maintained because they are the future. The children are the future of Ukraine. What we want to do is to prevent any disruption in education,” Papaconstantinou said in an exclusive interview with the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

He added that "light and medium rehabilitation" of schools is needed to return children to school. Thus, the European Union is creating high-quality bomb shelters in Ukraine in order to move from online education to offline education.

“We want to establish digital learning spaces as well because we need to rely also on technology. We believe these programs are instrumental in providing relief to children. , who are the most traumatized by the conflict. They need to go back to a safe space with other kids where they have psychosocial support. And we provide it through our programs,” Papaconstantinou noted.

According to him, the European Union provides support through catch-up learning projects for the kids who had a disruption in their education, as well as for teachers.

“So, we've done it already in many cases from the basic approach to education and emergencies to more sophisticated and good learning outcome-based approaches, meaning that what teachers and kids are going to achieve through this process is going to be a quality outcome. And, interestingly, the Ukraine crisis theater provides us with a platform to propagate the idea that even when there is an active war with missiles and drones, kids can continue to get educated,” Papaconstantinou added.

The European Union has so far supported the light and medium repairs of around 140 schools and bomb shelters, while works from our partners are currently ongoing in another 100 schools and shelters.

“The repairing of schools and shelters remains a priority for us going forward, as this is paramount to facilitate safe access to face-to-face learning in Ukraine,” the European Commission representative said.