‘Safe Learning Environment’ focuses on technical and material support for distance learning and related activities. The need for this type of learning has become particularly important since the outbreak of the full-scale invasion and new threats associated with missile, bomb and artillery shelling of Ukrainian cities, including educational and training facilities, as well as a significant outflow of students abroad due to the war.
For example, on 1 September 2022, the EU supported the ‘SchoolToGo’ project to enable learning for children who have moved abroad or to areas of Ukraine not affected by hostilities. The action also conducted 2 summer schools in 2023-2024 to address educational losses caused by COVID -19 and war. The project’s budget was almost EUR 1 million, and its activities completed.
At the same time, in 2022, another large-scale two-year project to help teachers and students, ‘All-Ukrainian School Online’ , was launched and implemented by UNICEF through the European Commission’s Foreign Policy Instrument with financial support from the EU.
The project has a budget of
EUR 10 million,
to provide teachers and students with the necessary digital hardware and teaching resources for safe and continuous distance learning.
In addition, Ukrainian schoolchildren received almost
40 000 laptops,
from the European Union as technical support for online learning opportunities.
With an additional
EUR 14 million,
from the European Commission, 100 school buses have been procured and delivered,
‘By helping Ukrainian children and young people, the European Union is not just fulfilling a humanitarian mission, but also investing in our common future.’
and another 263 buses have been provided by EU Member States as part of the pan-European Ukraine Solidarity Campaign.
Additionally, the European Commission has donated
1.5 million student textbooks,
including 1 million for computer science classes printed under the Erasmus programme (EUR 3 million was allocated for this purpose).
Another 367 000 science textbooks
have been provided to secondary school students through the implementation of the joint EU-Finnish ‘Learning Together’ project.
The IT Studio learning platform and the eTwinning initiative were launched to fill the learning gaps. Thanks to the latter, 1 480 Ukrainian educational establishments were given access to the European School Education Platform, and
424
active school twinning partnerships were established between Ukrainian and EU schools.
This cruel war has robbed thousands of Ukrainian children of their innocence and childhood. But it will not deprive them of the bright and happy future they deserve. That’s why I am happy that we can help bringing Ukrainian children safely to school.
