The Zimin Foundation now supports trauma counselling for children, teachers, and parents at the ORT Ukraine School 141 in Kyiv. As the ongoing war takes a toll on the mental health of people in Ukraine, it highlights the issue of supporting children and adults involved in the educational process, and the ZF is starting to work with one of six ORT Ukrainian schools on this project.

Children require extra help to navigate the stress of war, adapt to new living conditions, overcome challenges, and ward off mental health issues. Adults, however, also need assistance to maintain their psychological well-being, alongside the knowledge and skills to support the younger ones. Therefore, in order to support children, the trauma counselling project aims to embrace every participant in the educational process: teachers, parents, and students.

The project will be implemented through the six ORT schools in Ukraine. ORT is a global education network that is driven by Jewish values. ORT Ukraine* supports more than 3,000 students spread across schools in Kyiv, Chernivtsi, Odessa, Zaporizhzhia, and Bila Tserkva.  Since February 2022 and the start of the war, ORT Ukraine and World ORT have been empowering students to continue their education irrespective of the circumstances they and their families face. The World ORT network reaches 200,000 people in over 40 countries through more than 40 schools, 2 universities, and vocational training programmes. ORT connects and supports Jewish communities all over the world.

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* Following its exclusion through much of the Soviet era, ORT returned to Ukraine in the early 1990s. In August 2000, ORT and the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine signed a memorandum to formalise cooperation in the fields of general, elementary, and secondary professional education. The first ORT school opened in Kyiv shortly after this point. Since then ORT has made a major impact on the quality of its Jewish schools in the country and the Jewish communities in which those schools are located, providing Jewish people with excellence in education for all ages, from preschoolers to the elderly. 

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