November 2024
ICDP in Ukraine had to go through a difficult period. Due to the war, many facilitators were forced to change their place of residence. Some facilitators left Ukraine for safer countries. Others moved to other cities or were forced to change jobs and activities. Due to this, connections with many facilitators were lost.
In 2024, we were engaged in restoring connections, collecting information about the place of residence of facilitators. By the summer, the register of facilitators was updated and a new coordination council was created that started to operate. Activities have been resumed in cities such as Kharkiv, Odessa, Kyiv, Poltava, Kramatorsk, Druzhkovka, Zaporizhzhia, Kryvyi Rih, Vinnytsia, and Dnipro. Two large training projects have been implemented.
On the volunteer initiative of ICDP Ukraine trainers, a group of facilitators was trained from July to October, including 26 participants from eight cities of Ukraine (Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Vinnytsia, Kryvyi Rih, Druzhkovka, Kamyanske, Zaporizhzhia) who completed the full training course and received facilitator level diplomas.
The second project was related to the training of facilitators for the International Charitable Foundation Caritas Ukraine. The training participants were 30 psychologists from crisis centres who work with children and specialists from Save the Children.
The new facilitators held parent groups in their cities. The group leaders noted that with the beginning of the war, there were more problems in families. Frequent experiences of stressful situations make adults emotionally closed and do not use positive emotions when communicating with their children. The principles of ICDP help to establish contact with children, to support them in the process of recovery and stabilization of their psycho-emotional state.
Facilitators who work for Save the Children note that children are unable to attend school regularly because of the war and experience frequent traumatic situations. Many witness their parents die, and experience separation from one or more caregivers, separation from brothers, sisters and other family members. Some children witnessed or participated in shocking events (for example, the release of brothers or sisters, relatives or neighbours from under the rubble after explosions).
The ICDP principles help to establish contact with children, to support them in the process of recovery and stabilization of their psycho-emotional states. Adults are also in an unstable psycho-emotional state. The seven principles of developing sensitivity in the program’s educators help to create trusting relationships within the group and launch work based on the principles of “peer to peer”.
Facilitators from Ternopil, Serhiy Bukhvalov and MariaGavrishko, said: “Adults showed interest, recalled stories from their childhood, talked about their relationships with children, and actively shared their experiences regarding methods of communication with children”
Facilitators Igor Dashevsky, Svitlana Klunnik (Poltava), shared that their group included not only parents, but also grandmothers. “Questions helped to activate group work. Participants shared their experiences regarding the fact that children spend a lot of time on gadgets. During the exchange of experiences, adults recalled the games they played in childhood. There were many lively positive emotions”.
Natalia Kosenko Ulyana Kotsemira (Drohobych) used practical exercises and videos in their work. Adults shared their feelings about how close adults expressed their love for them in childhood.
Facilitator Marina Nechaeva (Kryvyi Rih) wrote: “The parents liked activities that involved interaction with each other, where they could talk about certain things about their lives. They also enjoyed the creative activity and individual work we did with them. It was interesting to watch how they shared their childhood memories, how much warmth they had and how others were filled with it. It was a little unexpected that some mothers burst into tears. After the tears, the condition of the participants began to stabilize”
Despite the difficult living conditions during the war, the trainers and facilitators of ICDP Ukraine continue their work and are planning to continue next year.