Recovery in Ukraine, one life at a time
In the frontline village of Bezruky which sits in the Kharkiv region – just half an hour’s drive from the Russian border – the local school took a direct hit early in the war and shut its doors. Tanks rolled past close enough to hear.Rebuilt windows and a reinforced structure brought it back. The basement became something else entirely; a shelter, then a gallery.
© UNOPS/Veronika Yaresko
A boy sists in a renovated classroom in Ukraine.
More than 15,000 children in the region are back in classrooms because of the project, run by the UN’s field agency for infrastructure and building projects (UNOPS) with European Union funding.A curriculum built around the childTeacher Yurii Tkalenko has spent 20 years in Cherkasy region classrooms. In 2025 he joined a training programme built around the New Ukrainian School reform.“Learning never stops,” he says. “The new curriculum focuses on the child, adapting education to their needs.”The programme is run by education and culture agency UNESCO, funded by the Global Partnership for Education, with Ukraine’s education ministry.Mothers bring new hopeFor Anastasiia, from the Donetsk region, having a baby meant leaving home for a protected maternity ward in Kharkiv, where she gave birth to twin boys.“I was afraid to give birth. But life goes on,” she says. “The doctors truly brought us through.”
