At the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, right next to a beautiful swimming lake, SOS Children's Villages Ukraine offers two-week summer camps for 80 children and young people throughout the whole summer. Most of the children come from the conflict regions in the east, and the beautiful and quiet nature in the peaceful rural western region alone has a healing effect. Days and nights without constant air raids, sheltering underground, and the noise of bombardments and close combat.

At first glance, the children seem cheerful, exuberant and very curious and open towards us. Only after a few days does the deep sadness, the emotional exhaustion, the aggression and withdrawal and the restlessness and fear become noticeable. And they begin to talk about the loss of one or both parents, about the father/brother who returned from the front with amputations and completely changed, about flight and internal displacement, about the time of deportation/forced adaptation in Russia.

An emergency and trauma education team from Friends of Waldorf Education, consisting of international and Ukrainian educators and a child and youth psychotherapist, was invited and requested to work with the children and youth for three days. The children were able to paint, work with clay, practiced rhythms and had fun with experiential educational games. The SOS Children's Village staff took part in these activities - participating, helping and experiencing themselves. Then the emergency pedagogy team had three days with the staff without the children, to discuss in theory and practice the previously experienced emergency pedagogy measures and activities. We explained what activities were chosen, how we worked and the therapeutic effect of the activities from a trauma education perspective, providing the staff with knowledge and tools to continue the work by themselves.

The contact was established via the director of the summer camps, who took part in the training course in emergency and trauma pedagogy run by Friends of Waldorf Education in Ukraine in 2022/2023. She clearly sees that children and young people need much more than just fun leisure activities in the current circumstances. It is important that they experience protection and stabilization.

The staff at the children's village are also exhausted, which is why the topic of self-care played a major role in our work with them. But despite their exhaustion, they give all their love, warmth and attention to the children. In general, there is a wonderful atmosphere of affection and solidarity and the human warmth. Joy and beautiful memories serve as a source of strength for the children and young people for what awaits them again in the reality of their lives.

Jessica Prentice