Supporting Schools in the Sumy Region During the War: Results of the School Up Project by East SOS
The Sumy region is one of Ukraine’s border areas where the educational process takes place under constant security risks. For schools, this means not only the need for flexibility, but also sustained systemic support – including safe learning spaces, trained professionals, and access to psychosocial assistance.
From January to December 2025, the East SOS education team implemented the School Up project to make education safer for children in border communities and to better equip teachers and school psychologists to work in the conditions of a full-scale war. The initiative focused on creating basic conditions that allow the educational process to continue even in times of heightened danger.
During this period, the Foundation’s team achieved the following results:
- Conducted three monitoring visits to general secondary education institutions in the Sumy region to identify urgent needs related to creating a safe and high-quality educational environment
- Organized a four-day safety training in Kyiv for 63 teachers, during which participants strengthened their skills in first aid and psychological support, information hygiene, and mine safety
- Engaged 387 teachers in a series of webinars focused on first aid and supporting children experiencing stress
- Provided advanced training and several months of supervisory support for five school psychologists, enabling them to implement modern approaches to mental health support in schools
- Ensured access to safer learning environments for 3,272 participants of the educational process from six educational institutions (Stories of resilience: here, here, and here)
- Equipped six shelters, six safety classrooms, and six psychological relief rooms in schools in Konotop, Vilshany, Mykolaivka, and the Kosivshchyna community
- Conducted group psycho-emotional relief sessions for schoolchildren, during which children learned to recognize their emotions and apply basic self-help techniques
“Working on this project became an opportunity for our team to support educators who, despite shelling and power outages, continue to bring warmth and hope to their students and strive to ensure quality education in difficult and tense border conditions. At the same time, it is a powerful motivation for us to keep moving forward and do everything possible so that future generations of Ukrainians, despite the war, have access to an educational environment that helps them grow and acquire the knowledge and skills they need,” said Anna Loza, Education Coordinator at East SOS.
The School Up project is part of East SOS’s long-term support for schools and educators who continue teaching children in regions where war is a daily reality.
Since 2016, the East SOS Charity Foundation has been providing comprehensive support to educators, students, civil society representatives, and local authorities. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Foundation has focused on arranging shelters in educational institutions, strengthening educators’ digital competencies, providing first aid training, delivering psychological and psychosocial support for children and youth, conducting project management training for community development, and organizing summer camps to compensate for educational losses.
The project “School Up: Supporting Schools in the Sumy Region in Improving the Safety and Psychological Well-Being of Educational Process Participants” is implemented by the East SOS Charity Foundation with the financial support of Fondation suisse de la Chaîne du Bonheur (Swiss Solidarity).
