Let's help blind children refugees from Ukraine

Dear friends!
Thanks to your support, our organization was not only able to survive during the full-scale war in Ukraine, but also to work hard and bring benefit, to implement its mission to improve the quality of life of children and young people with severe visual impairments.
The "Humanitarian Aid Headquarters" of our organization constantly provides support to families raising children with disabilities. These are food packages, hygiene products, medicines, rehabilitation equipment, toys, clothes.
Spring and summer did not bring peace to Ukraine. Unfortunately, the situation in our country has become even worse. And children suffer from this first of all. We understand how important it is to give Ukrainian families raising children with severe visual impairments the opportunity to receive support from specialists.
To provide the necessary knowledge for the development and upbringing of children in such extreme conditions as war. Knowledge that will help them cope with difficulties and prevent children from stopping their development.
Thanks to the support of Global Given, we were able to organize an online school of parenting skills, where parents meet with specialists twice a week, listen to lectures, and get answers to questions that concern them. We organized a chat “Parental Universities” on the Telegram channel, where we post methodological materials for parents and specialists.
During the reporting period, we paid a lot of attention to supporting distance learning for blind children.
We paid the greatest attention to the preparation and printing of educational literature. For schoolchildren, we adapt textbooks according to the principles of universal design, which is very convenient for blind children who study in regular, comprehensive schools, their teachers and parents.
For teachers, we printed the methodological manuals “Mangold” and “Punktum”, aimed at teaching Braille.
The brochure “Hands for hugs” - psychological support for families raising children with disabilities.
The brochure “Your assistant in mastering Braille”. Forest rhymed alphabet is an alphabet that can be seen, heard and felt.
Thanks to the project, the following children's books were published:
– "Papa Reads" – frontline stories that opened a rich inner world through fairy tales!
The book's poems and fairy tales convey the pain of war,
the book teaches us to understand the true price of peace and independence, to cherish the memory of the Heroes!
"The Little Deceiver Mouse" is a psychological fairy tale, "Malyaka - Princess of Dragonia" is an adventure, "Smittyariki" is an ecological fairy tale, "Hello! I'm from Ukraine", "Nation Code. Embroidered Shirt".
We pay a lot of attention to psychological support for children and young people.
Together with our partners, we organize psychological trainings, fun leisure activities, and meetings of the "Reading Club" with children's writers.
We hold all events inclusively.
The holiday "Hello, Summer!" brought a lot of joy to both children and adults. It was a time when they could forget about the war, at least for a short time. More than 100 children received toys, books, and sweets as gifts.
At the moment, we are preparing for an inclusive project "The Path to Independence" for teenagers with severe visual impairments, which will be implemented in Bulgaria. The project volunteers will be sighted peers of the blind participants of the project. We are confident that their communication and joint leisure will help overcome negative stereotypes about blind people.

Dear friends!
We thank everyone who supports our project to support families of Ukrainian children who have complex developmental disabilities.
Three years of military aggression from Russia have deprived Ukrainian children of their childhood. Our dream is that Ukrainian children, despite the war, have a real childhood, with games, laughter, and not just treatment and rehabilitation.
War throws children back in their development.
Our kids have experienced psychological trauma associated with shelling, difficulties in evacuation, and parental stress.
The situation has become especially acute in Kharkov and the Kharkov region.
We understand how important it is to give such families the opportunity to receive support from specialists.
To provide the necessary knowledge for the development and upbringing of their children in such extreme conditions as war.
Knowledge that will help them cope with difficulties and prevent their children from stopping their development.
More than 40 project participants gathered in the beautiful place of Pavlovy Bani in Bulgaria. An international team of specialists: typhlopedagogics, speech therapists, psychologists, physical rehabilitation specialists, a spatial orientation instructor, and an art therapist work with children and mothers in the first half of the day.
In the second half of the day, mothers have the opportunity to receive psychological support, relax, communicate, and maintain physical health. The 10 days of the project are filled with acceptance and love for children, positive emotions, excursions to interesting places in Bulgaria. And the walks and games with our wonderful volunteers will be remembered by the children for a long time.

We watched how the faces of our little ones changed throughout the project. How they turned from little prickly hedgehogs into cheerful, active pranksters.
Parents wrote in their reviews of the project: “It was cool!”, “Fantastic project!”, “I'm glad that I could spend time with you, learn a lot from everyone. "Thank you for your care and sensitivity, for relaxation and lots of laughter", "Deep appreciation and gratitude for the advice, for so generously sharing your valuable experience!", "You embrace our children with your love, care, patience and they blossom! You believe in them and they succeed! Thank you for your work and for your inexhaustible kindness!"