Homeland|Russian invasion
SOS-Lapsikylä’s chat service helps children and young people in Ukraine. According to the expert, war in children’s eyes is ugly and full of losses.
“The Ukrainians the children have had to grow up quickly.”
This is what the SOS Children’s Village development planner says Iryna Petermann for STT. Petermann develops Let’s chat service, which is intended for Ukrainian children and young people between the ages of 7 and 17 who want to talk about their concerns in their native language. It works in connection with chat Domashka chat servicewhere you can get homework help in Ukrainian.
Homework chats were created because many children started the conversation by first asking about homework. It was not natural for all the children to start a conversation directly about things that are pressing on them.
“Almost all discussions concern the war in some way,” says SOS-Lapsikylä’s head of preventive digital work Johanna Virtanen for STT.
The majority of chat users are between the ages of 14 and 17. Apart from the war, children’s concerns are related to school, family and bullying, for example. According to Virtanen, the children think a lot about friendships that have been changed by fleeing the war.
More than half of the children using the services are in Ukraine and the rest in Finland, Poland and Germany.
Chat services are needed, because children don’t always talk about their worries to their parents, even if they are close. According to Virtanen, children strive to be strong because of their parents. Boys in particular feel that they are responsible for their family.
“Children ask when the war will end. In the eyes of children, war is ugly and full of losses. If children had the power, they would end the war,” says Petermann.
According to the Finnish Immigration Service, there are currently around 12,000 Ukrainian children under the age of 17 in Finland’s reception system.
Petermann says that in Ukrainian culture it is not customary to share personal things with outsiders. Despite this, there have been around 1,300 people who have contacted Ukrainian-language chat services so far, and the Ukrainian media has been enthusiastic about promoting the service.
According to Petermann, Finland is a pioneer in online helping work. There are few similar services in other parts of the world.
Studying is a big concern for children. Lessons are missed if you have to go to a bomb shelter, and power outages make it difficult to do homework.
“We tell the children that the most important thing is to be healthy and alive,” says Petermann.
After that when Russia had started the war, SOS-Lapsikylä was meant for Finnish children and young people In the help chat big visitor spike.
The children talked about their own feeling of insecurity, their relatives in Ukraine and their fear of war. Then the chat attendants quoted to the children Sauli Niinistön and Sanna Marini (sd) comments that Finns need not be afraid. According to Virtanen, the children found hope in the words.
“Children follow current affairs. For example, the NATO discussion can be seen in contacts,” says Virtanen.
Apuu-chat is contacted by young people who experience constant anxiety. The causes of anxiety vary from being late for school to violence and sexual abuse. According to Virtanen, the weaknesses of the service system are visible in the chat service.
“The long waiting times for child and youth psychiatric services are visible here. Help does not come into the child’s everyday life.”
Not all contacts can get through the chat to talk with a volunteer or a professional. The emergency operators were able to answer about half of the approximately 60,000 calls received last year. That is why there is a constant need for new volunteers.
Save me Lapset ry’s expert Katja Ristola has been working in Kyiv for the past year. Before the war, there were twenty employees of the organization in Ukraine, while now there are more than 300 of them. The organization supports children and their families by, among other things, delivering food and water to internally displaced persons, giving cash aid and repairing schools and bomb shelters.
According to Ristola, more than 3,000 schools have been damaged and almost 400 schools have been destroyed in the bombings. A very small part of the remaining schools are open because there is a shortage of the energy needed to heat them and there are no usable bomb shelters in the schools.
“The children’s great wish is to get back to school after the corona years,” Ristola tells STT.
in eastern Ukraine parents don’t always want to send their children to school because of the fear of missile strikes. That’s why Save the Children has established digital learning centers where children can study safely. According to Ristola, only about a third of the children have their own device for distance learning at home.
In addition, the organization has put together bunker kits, which are distributed in schools and kindergartens. The packages contain games and drawing materials for being in a bomb shelter.
Child protection and psychosocial support are part of all other services of the organization. The support aims to prevent traumatization of children. According to Ristola, traumas can only appear years later.
“Children have a vague picture of the future. No one knows how long the war will last, if they will be safe and when the next attack will come.”
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