NewsNews12 September 2018

As part of the Right to Education project, the School of Superheroes was opened in the capital's "Okhmadita".

Currently, children who are forced to stay outside of normal life for a long time - due to the treatment of serious diseases in hospital conditions - are studying here. Lessons are held in three formats: individual lessons for children, group lessons in classes, and binary lessons, which are prepared by teachers of several subjects on a common topic.

"Some spend a few days in the hospital, and some spend a few months, and there are those who literally live here for years, during which time they lag behind their peers in education, because they do not have the opportunity to study systematically. This is wrong," says Evgenia Smirnova, the initiator of the creation of an educational space in "Okhmadita", the head of the NGO Small Heart with Art.

For four years, activists were working toward this goal, but everything changed when the school was supported by the 1+1 media team and personally by TSN presenter, curator of the "Right to Education" project Nataliya Moseychuk. A year ago, a class was opened in the HIV/AIDS department, and during the charity marathon on Children's Day, "Breakfast with 1+1" collected more than 650,000 hryvnias to open another class of the School of Superheroes in the toxicology department of the Okhmatdyt National Children's Clinic. Many caring people supported the project: teachers, representatives of socially responsible business - Epicenter hypermarket, pharmaceutical corporation "YURiYA-PHARM", charitable foundation "KOLO", Academy of Patrol Police, international institutions and legal partners of Pavlenko Legal Group. The lots were provided by stars and the Study.ua company, the Academy of Modern Education A+.

Funds from the audience were deposited into the account of the fund "You are not alone" 1+1 media.

"This school is a vivid example of how much a socially active community and business can do with the support of international organizations," Pauletta Walsh, Assistant Press Attaché of the US Embassy in Ukraine, said at the opening of the "School of Superheroes".

Lviv became an example for Kyiv volunteers. Here, at the Western Ukrainian Specialized Children's Medical Center and at Lviv Okhmatdyt, there are schools attached to the hospitals, where the teaching format based on the neighboring schools has been preserved, and thus it was possible to organize a system of lessons for all age groups, fulfill educational standards and ensure the payment of teachers' salaries. Teachers give children not only knowledge, but also become reliable assistants and friends.

"Creating such a special educational space was not easy, but it is important for us that children in hospitals feel needed by society and believe in the best," says the director of HBK "Sofia Kindergarten School" Iryna Sinya.

Nataliya Moseychuk is grateful to the volunteers, and it would be quite fair that the work of creating specialized educational institutions at hospitals should be done by the state. Therefore, he represents the interests of children in state institutions, in particular, in the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Ministry of Health. In the summer, a working group was created, which is engaged in the development of regulations on full-time general secondary education in health care institutions.

The goal of the project team is to open educational spaces in 33 hospitals in all regions of Ukraine. School-hospital collaboration is the norm in children's medical facilities around the world.

"It is very important that the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Ministry of Health have time to provide a prepared provision before the approval of the state budget for next year, then we can talk about the state's participation in solving this issue," said TSN TV presenter, English teacher Marichka Padalko.

The management of Kyiv Okhmatdyt willingly responded to the offer of volunteers to create a full-fledged educational space, a territory of positivity in the hospital:

"Lessons, interesting electives, communication with teachers and peers - all this helps children to distract themselves from the disease, to recover faster - says the chief doctor of "Okhmaditu" Iryna Sadovyak.

The team of the Right to Education project and the NGO Small Heart with Art are ready to share their experience with everyone who will participate in the creation of such institutions in their cities, from regional to district, because our children really need it. The teachers of the 1+1 Higher School of Media & Production, who have already prepared various electives for the students, joined the project.

Video The right to education in hospitals .

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