Temporary school in Chervona Dolyna

Temporary infrastructure solutions

The story of Chervona Dolyna is one of our favorite examples of a truly comprehensive approach in a single community.

It all began with the creation of a EduHive learning center inside the local “house of culture”. But for a village that, due to occupation and shelling, no longer had a school for its children, this was not enough.
So, as part of our Back to School summer campaign, we launched a fundraising effort to renovate the rest of the “house of culture” and turn it into a temporary school.

Thanks to a “patchwork” fundraising effort — with contributions from different organizations and individual donors — we made it happen!

The donors included the Choose Love and Reimagine Ukraine foundations; businesses Lenovo, Bakehouse, and Henkel; the crowdfunding platform Moie Misto; and Maksym Ishchenko, founder of DOU.ua & Djinni.co, who made a personal contribution.

Later, Chervona Dolyna also received a modular school, further expanding the local educational ecosystem and opportunities for students.

Region Mykolaiv
Students 176
Result A space for learning has been created in the community centre
Collected ₴2 000 000

Story of the village

What happened

The village of Chervona Dolyna in the Mykolaiv region was under temporary occupation until November 2022.

The school and kindergarten were destroyed by the occupiers with aerial bombs and rockets. The area around the school was also hit.

It will not be possible to fully restore the destroyed school in the near future due to a lack of funds. However, it is vitally important to give children the opportunity to continue their education.

Story of the project

New life for an old building

The children of Chervona Dolyna needed more space for learning and… childhood.

The local cultural centre miraculously survived, except for the broken windows. In one of the rooms, savED, together with the U-LEAD with Europe programme, set up the Vulyk educational centre, where children can come offline.

We decided to continue renovating and equipping the community centre to turn it into a temporary school.

What did we get?

A celebration for all

We began working on raising funds for a temporary school in a surviving cultural centre.

To this end, in the summer of 2023, during the summer campaign ‘Back to School,’ we announced a fundraiser for this project. And something incredible happened — the creation of the school brought together nearly a dozen donors and businesses, who raised funds in a variety of ways!

In the summer of 2024, we opened a brand new space — symbolically on the eve of the new summer campaign season!

The opening was a real celebration for the children and the entire community.

Children now have the opportunity to attend school offline — at least the youngest ones, who find it difficult or impossible to study remotely without the help of their elders.

And for adults, the new educational space has become a symbol of hope that life is being restored even after terrible destruction, that the community is growing stronger, and that families have another reason to return home.