By Aleksandra Strzelecka | Project Leader
We support refugee children who, since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, have been staying in Poland – a country that is becoming their second home. We distribute books where they are needed most, in order to prevent reading exclusion, enable reading in one’s native language – Ukrainian, English and also support the learning of Polish.
Schools, kindergartens, libraries, and community centers serving Ukrainian children and adults continue to reach out to us. Thanks to our partners, they receive books in three languages. In recent months, we have donated several dozen books to the Opole Education Center in Kluczbork, and several hundred books for Ukrainian children to the Ukrainian Language Learning Center in Elblag.
We continuously provide online free materials in Ukrainian. These resources help improve school communication – facilitating understanding during lessons between Ukrainian- and Polish-speaking students – and support integration by accelerating adaptation to the Polish school system through useful words and phrases. Educational materials are also available for teachers, who can print the glossary or adapt parts of it using phonetic transcription.
#BooksGiveRefuge is an initiative focused on the emotional support and psychological stability that books provide to children – especially in times of crisis. Access to literature in a native or understandable language is a key element of social integration and a way to counter exclusion.
As the Universal Reading Foundation, we support refugees in Poland in various ways. As part of the #BookOnPrescription project, which introduces reading recommendations into pediatric care, we have, together with the Federation of European Publishers, published 60,000 bilingual children’s books for Polish but also Ukrainian families receiving medical care in Poland. Being a past of an European Books without Borders program, we also published a bilingual volume of poetry for adults, designed with universal accessibility in mind for language learners.
We thank our donors for your generous support so far and kindly ask to continue your help! In June we honor World Refugee Day and now GlobalGiving is matching donations to support Ukraine: every contribution grows by 50%. Join us!
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