Help Ukrainian Children Avoid Landmines on School

Imagine you are twelve years old and you are walking home from school. The road is familiar — you have walked it a thousand times. But today, something catches your eye at the edge of the path. Something small, half-buried in the grass. Something that, to a child's eyes, almost looks like it could be a toy.

In Ukraine, that moment can end a life.

There is a type of landmine scattered across Ukrainian fields and roads that children have started calling "petals." They are small. Butterfly-shaped. Designed to blend in. And they are everywhere — in the grass beside schools, in the forests where children play, on the roads that families have walked their whole lives. Ukraine is now the most heavily mine-contaminated country in the world. More than 20% of its territory is affected. Since the full-scale invasion began, at least 179 children have been killed or injured by landmines and explosive remnants of war. Boys between 14 and 17 — curious, brave, sometimes reckless the way boys that age can be — make up nearly 80% of those casualties.

These are not numbers. They are children who had names, backpacks, and someone waiting for them at home.

What your support made possible

In the first half of 2026, we went where few organisations dare to go: right to the front line. Together with a team of Ukrainian volunteers — people who know these communities, who grew up in these towns, who have lived through the same war these children are living through — we delivered mine awareness sessions in 5 schools in frontline areas, reaching 1,200 children.

These are not safe schools in quiet cities. These are schools where the windows are taped against blasts. Where teachers keep going because stopping would feel like losing. Where children keep their bags near the door, just in case. Going into those classrooms and sitting with those children — talking about petals and shells and what to do when something doesn't look right — took real courage. From our volunteers. And from every child who listened.

One of those children was Dmytro. He is 12 years old, from a village near Kharkiv. A few weeks after our session at his school, he was walking home and saw something half-buried at the edge of the road. Metallic. Unfamiliar. He felt the pull of curiosity — and then he remembered. He stopped. He did not touch it. He backed away slowly and told an adult. A demining specialist arrived and confirmed it was an unexploded mortar shell. It was neutralised safely.

"He saved us all," his mother said. "He knew what to do."

That is what education looks like when it matters most.

Why our volunteers make all the difference

The people delivering these sessions are not outsiders with a manual. They are Ukrainians. They have lived the same war. They speak to these children not as experts from far away, but as neighbours who know the road, who understand the fear, and who show up anyway. That trust — earned, not given — is what makes a child truly listen.

Before the invasion, one of our educators in Kharkiv worked as a shoe designer. She knew nothing about mines. Today she visits school after school, talking to children about how to stay alive. The war changed everything for her, as it did for millions. She chose to use that change to protect others. Our volunteers are that same kind of person.

What comes next

We are not done. There are more schools. More roads. More children who walk past danger every single day without knowing it.

Every session we deliver, every child who learns to stop and step back instead of reaching out — that is a life protected. That is a family that stays whole.

Thank you for being part of this. From Ukraine, from the children, from our volunteers —

. Thank you.