"All dreams of children are about victory and Putin's death". Foundation, which Madonna and Oprah told the world about
Voices of Children is a charitable foundation that Olena Rozvadovska and Azad Safarov registered in 2019. Officially. In fact, Olena has been going to the East since 2015 and helping children from frontline towns and villages. To do this, she left her job as a spokesperson for the Ombudsman for Children's Rights.
Until February 24, Olena did not even receive a salary from her own foundation, and the support of Ukrainians, who have already been tired of the war for eight years, was insignificant. Now Voices of Children has branches in several cities of Ukraine, hundreds of volunteers, donations from all over the world, and constant requests for help.
“We started doing everything we did before, but without sleep”
The Voices of Children had no doubts that a full-scale war would begin. During February, Olena gave daily interviews to foreign media, which at that time only talked about the possibility of a major invasion.
“Everyone was looking for a speaker who could speak about the East in English. It seemed to me that the war was something so obvious. We did not live in an agenda where everything happened suddenly,” says Olena.
From the first day of the full-scale war, Voices of Children helped families with children without delay. They did the same as before, only without sleep: they evacuated families and searched for mattresses and beds for temporary shelters in Western Ukraine.
Sometimes Azad, who was working with a Sky News crew at the front, would take the families to his car or ask fellow journalists to take them out in their cars. Sometimes families were accommodated in hotel rooms rented by foreign media in Lviv. But not all the families, even those who had been under the care of Voices of Children for many years, were ready to leave their homes and go.
“For a month and a half, I persuaded a grandmother and her three grandchildren, the heroes of the film A documentary film by Danish director Simon Lereng, in which Azad Safarov is an assistant director"The Distant Barking of Dogs" to leave Mariupol. They refused. Then I said: "Okay. But in case something happens, I will not be able to help you, you will have to leave by yourself." After that, they said they would think about it. On February 23, they called me and said that they were ready to go. I bought tickets for the 24th. It is clear that they did not go anywhere”, - Azad says.
Olena adds that people from the East, who had already evacuated once, were discouraged to leave again. The realization of the scale of the war came to some of them only after what they saw in Bucha and Mariupol.
“In Avdiivka, from where we took two families, it was not as loud as in Kyiv and Chernihiv at the beginning. They did not understand what was happening, they called and asked how we were doing. They said that everything was fine and quiet. And then it started...”, Olena says.
“For us, it was an opportunity to think not about money, but about how to help everyone at once”
In parallel with the evacuation and arrangement of temporary housing for families, Voices of Children organized an online hotline for psychological assistance. Only the specialists with whom the foundation had previously cooperated had to be stopped almost at the border. Azad and Olena persuaded them to return and urgently searched for sponsors who could pay for their apartments in Lviv, where prices had risen significantly at that time.
“We understood that we need to help those who will help children. If you do not give resources to psychologists, they will not be able to work. So we managed to keep about a dozen specialists in Ukraine,” Azad says.
At the same time, people from all over the world, including Japanese schoolchildren, Korean dancers, and shamans from Australia, collected money to help Ukrainian children. And one day the volunteers saw thousands of letters on the foundation's e-mail: foreigners wrote to them expressing their support and sending money. Several people sat in front of the computers and just opened these e-mails. The system of accepting payments at some point even stopped coping with so many transfers.
“Most donations came from the UK, USA, and Germany. It was an opportunity for us to think not about money, but about how to help everyone at once,” says Olena.
The surge in the number of donors occurred after Oprah Winfrey wrote about the foundation in her blog, and Madonna transferred the money raised from the auction of her project. Previously, the foundation did not have such a scale of support. There were 5-6 people on the team and outsourced psychologists.
“When you distribute humanitarian aid, you can report about it. Let’s say, there are 10 packages. And how can you explain to people that you provide psychological assistance? You will not take a child by the hand and bring them to show how the sessions with a psychologist affected them. Yes, you can write that you helped, what you did. But this is not about the result in 5 seconds.
The war changed everything, many people began to seek psychological help, and just as many began to support us.
It seems to me that everything Olena has done and invested in Voices of Children over the years is now returning to her,” Azad says and recalls a telling situation: when they held an auction and sold children's crafts in 2021, they managed to raise about 1700 hryvnias.
In April, Forbes compiled a rating of charitable foundations and NGOs that were most effective in raising money to support Ukrainians and the Armed Forces. Voices of Children then entered the top ten. At that time, it was about 68.3 million hryvnias collected.
No child should be left alone with the experience of war
Donations from people around the world allowed Voices of Children to open offices in Lviv, Truskavets, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi, Berehove, Kryvyi Rih, and Kharkiv. And, in particular, an office in Kyiv.
“These centers work every day, and any mother who understands that the situation with her child has worsened as a result of the war can come there. That is not only IDPs and local families of servicemen, but anyone who feels such an unbearable burden,” says Olena.
In all these places, families with children can get psychological help. Voices of Children returned to its original goal after months of fulfilling urgent requests.
“Our mission remains the same — no child should be left alone with the experience of war. We used to talk about the trauma of war, but now we have changed it to "the experience of war". This is a broader concept,” says Olena.
She explains that each child is affected by war differently, and it is not necessarily a trauma. Some children from frontline towns and villages in the East perceive war as something normal. They calmly write to Olena saying that they are preparing to graduate from school while informing her that they have recently been shell-shocked or wounded.
There are also cases in which it is enough to provide psychological assistance to one of the parents so that they, in turn, help the child.
“Not a crisis, but a war”
With the rapid development of the foundation, international organizations also began to come to Voices of Children. Azad recounts the situation when they were early accepted by a large and respected international organization. However, in its description of Voices of Children, the organization decided to avoid the word “Russians”.
“They offered to keep the part that the war in Ukraine continues, children are dying. We did not agree to this. Why should we be afraid to say that Russians are killing children? We were ready to leave this organization. The experience of each war is unique. Therefore, we have to dictate the agenda of how to work with children in Ukraine, because we are the ones who are deepest in the context. The narrative should come from us,” emphasizes the co-founder of the foundation.
In the rapid flow, Azad and Olena want to preserve their uniqueness. They constantly go “to the fields”, personally communicate with children and families, and keep in touch with them. Therefore, in their work, they focus on not being dependent on the conditions of foreign partners.
“There are no template solutions in war. No matter how much we communicate with international organizations, we have not yet taken and translated any protocol or experience. Because it does not work. In Syria, Vietnam, the Balkans, it's one thing, but in our country, it's completely different,” says Olena.
"Mriia" for every child
We came to Voices of Children on the day when it was announced that the documentary “A House Made of Splinters” was shortlisted for an Oscar. The story of children from the Lysychansk Centre for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation and the caregivers trying to create a safe space for them is at the heart of the film. Azad produced the film, and Olena helped the film crew to make sure that the filming process was ethical and not traumatic for the children.
Last year, the film “The Distant Barking of Dogs” about a family that Azad persuaded to leave a village near Mariupol on the border with Russia on the eve of a full-scale war, was also on the list of Oscar contenders.
Both movie posters are in the large room of the office of the Voices of Children, next to them there is a chocolate Oscar figurine, and next to it is a pile of blue boxes, on top of which is a wooden Mriia plane. This year, the foundation decided to congratulate the wards on the Christmas holidays in such a way: to present a construction set from which children have to make an airplane.
All employees of the office are involved in the packing of blue boxes. And sometimes their wards help them. One day they were waiting for 17-year-old Dasha, who left Svitlodarsk for Mykolaiv with her grandmother.
“On the day Dasha was supposed to come to us to pack these gifts, her mother was killed by shelling in Svitlodarsk. A direct hit. And today it is Dasha who can help, and the next day it is Dasha who lost her mother.”
With this story, Olena brings us to another problem faced by Voices of Children: while the war continues, they cannot talk about the development strategy or make any global plans.
“Where we are going is our main question now. But at the same time, we cannot sit down for strategic planning, because we directly depend on the development of hostilities, on the situation at the front. The families we work with very often move from the category of “resource” families to the category of families in need of support.”
At some point, the power goes out in the office and we continue talking in the twilight.
“Electricity also brings instability. We have generators and candles on the cells. It is important for us to have a place where people can come under any circumstances.”
During the full-scale war, about 5 thousand families received assistance from Voices of Children. Every month 200 children pass through local branches. About 2-3 thousand children participated in the camp programs organized in the summer. There are constantly 500 requests for online assistance.
— What are the voices of Ukrainian children about now? — I ask Olena finally.
— All voices are now about victory. If you ask any child what he or she dreams about, or what he or she draws, you will definitely hear in response: "Victory". It is very important for them to see the end of the war. And a lot of children's voices are about Putin's death.