Support Children and Families in Ukraine

Dear Friend,

Ukraine’s children and their families have endured 18 months of forced displacement, unthinkable loss, and relentless violence since the escalation of war in February 2022. Nearly two thirds of Ukraine’s children have been forced to flee their homes. Some have fled alone, exposing them to abuse, abduction, sexual exploitation, and human trafficking. Fear, anxiety, and grief associated with violence, loss of loved ones, separation from family, and displacement persist in children’s daily lives, leaving them struggling to cope. Many children who have sought refuge in neighboring countries remain without access to education, healthcare, and protection services.

UNICEF programs have enabled children to access quality health care and age-appropriate learning, benefit from child-focused protection systems and gender-sensitive water, sanitation, and hygiene services. UNICEF’s key results from the past 18 months in Ukraine and in countries hosting refugees include:

• 3,857,846 children accessed formal or non-formal education.
• 5,365,197 children and caregivers accessed mental health and psychological support.
• 5,776,722 people accessed safe water.
• 7,888,446 children and women accessed primary health care interventions through UNICEF supported mechanisms.

With your generous support, UNICEF will continue to respond to children’s urgent humanitarian needs and ensure children have access to health care, immunization, nutrition, education, water and sanitation, and mental health and psychosocial support.

Your support has been and will continue to be essential to UNICEF’s ability to reach the most vulnerable children suffering the unthinkable effects of war.

In partnership,

Alia

Photo Description: 

September 1, 2023, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Children are studying at the computers at the new Digital Learning Center

Today, most of the children at the Digital Learning Center are sitting at desks for the first time since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine. The center provides them with everything they need for online learning, including laptops, headphones and internet access.

To ensure continuing education for every child during the war, UNICEF is establishing Digital Learning Centers in eastern and southern Ukraine. In these regions, face-to-face education is limited due to the security situation and school infrastructure is often damaged. Access to distance education is also difficult due to power outages, lack of internet and lack of devices.

Since February 2022, UNICEF has supported access to formal and non-formal education, including preschool education, for nearly 1.5 million of the most vulnerable children in Ukraine.

Dear Friend, 

The war in Ukraine continues to rob children of their stability and safety, their schools, friends, family and homes. When the war escalated, armed violence intensified in at least eight oblasts (regions) resulting in death, injuries, and mass displacement of people from the south and eastern parts of Ukraine to the west and to neighboring countries. Impeded access was an immediate challenge, as was continued shelling and violence. Of the millions of people who fled across the borders during the first weeks and months, 90 percent were women and children. For others, life continued underground -in subways and cellars, and basements, often in freezing conditions. UNICEF’s decades of experience working in conflicts around the world and your generous support has equipped the organization to adapt and respond effectively in Ukraine.  

With your support, UNICEF has ensured access to essential primary health care services for 1.5 million children and women in 2023. Additionally, this year 552,862 children and caregivers have accessed mental health and psychosocial support and 67,661 households were reached with cash transfers. This past month alone UNICEF has ensured access to safe water for 382,968 people, for a total of 2,772,764 people supported this year. 

On behalf of the children of Ukraine, we express our deepest gratitude for your support of UNICEF’s work. Your generosity has been and will continue to be essential to UNICEF’s ability to reach the most vulnerable children, the most crisis-affected children and the forgotten children suffering the unthinkable effects of war.

In partnership, 

Alia

 *Photo caption: April 27 2023, Spilno Child Spot at Kyiv, Ukraine. A mother brought her baby to vaccination.

During World Immunization Week from 24 to 30 April, Ukraine’s Ministry of Health mobile vaccination teams offered children and adults an opportunity to receive vaccines at more than 30 UNICEF Spilno Child Spots across Ukraine. Vaccines received on schedule, or as catch-up doses, will help ensure protection from highly infectious and dangerous diseases.

To help the Government of Ukraine, UNICEF continues to supply vaccines and upgrade of cold chain. . On 25 April, UNICEF provided the Ministry of Health with six large refrigerator vehicles for vaccine transportation.

Earlier in April, UNICEF delivered 543,000 doses of oral polio vaccine (OPV) and 110,160 doses of inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) to protect Ukrainian children against the deadly disease. In addition, 35,200 doses of vaccine against measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) was delivered in March.