Project Spotlight: Helping War-Torn Ukraine

The Fellowship  |  November 21, 2024

Svetlana is the assistant principal of a Fellowship-supported Jewish school in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, which has remained open despite the war, providing much-needed support and education to the children who remain in the city.

She’s able to update us on what life is like in the middle of a warzone: “In the pre-war days all the classes were full. Now there are only a few families left here in Zhytomyr and we only have 25 children of school age from 1st to 12th grade. More than 80% of the community left.”

They’ve faced challenges of power outages, low class sizes, and hostilities of war. Still, this is one of the only Jewish schools open and educating children in this war-torn city of Ukraine.

“We have combined classes and still, each class has only a small number of children,” says Svetlana. “For instance, in the 6th grade, we have only one girl – Bella. Therefore, we put children of different ages in one class and the teacher assigns them special tasks according to their age.”

Svetlana says it’s because of the help from The Fellowship that they can keep their doors open.

We’ve provided a generator to help the school stay open even amid power outages, which have been frequent during the war, as Russia keeps attacking Ukraine’s power grid. Also, the school expanded their bomb shelter so that studies aren’t interrupted.

Svetlana says, “It’s a miracle; thanks to The Fellowship’s donors, we can run the school.”