This generation may be not ready for life at all - volunteer on children growing up in shelters 

Mykyta Ponomarenko, a volunteer, one of the coordinators, and currently the head of the "5 Peron" NGO, told about this in the comments for Espreso. 

The volunteer says that the coronavirus pandemic dealt the first blow to the full-fledged education of children. A full-scale war made the situation even more difficult.

"Education has already been interrupted due to the coronavirus, and now there is also a war. As a result, there are quite intelligent children with whom you talk and understand that they are talented, but at the same time, at the age of 10 or 11, they do not know how to read. In my opinion, this  is unacceptable for a European country, because then the general level of interest and outlook is low. That is, one feels how much children are not interested in learning," says the volunteer.

He does not agree with the banal explanation that children are not interested in learning because they are "absorbed with their phones".

"They are simply not engaged in much, including the adults themselves, their parents. It depends on people, everyone behaves differently in exactly the same conditions. Someone just lies down and gets used, perhaps, to the role of a victim, while someone found a job, moved and rents an apartment. I was surprised that many of the displaced people, after living here for many months, still do not know how to get to the nearest park or to the museum in the center. This passivity is born of shock, they are afraid of many things. But for the most part, people do not mind doing something, they just need to be organized," the volunteer stressed.

According to him, the problems arise because there is no average level of organizers in Ukraine who would deal with social and educational issues in shelters. Currently, Mykyta and other volunteers go to the shelters, trying to entertain the children, actually playing the role of entertainers.

"This all looks like an attempt to plug a huge hole. Volunteers, animators cannot replace the school, they do not have such a resource. To come and teach these children is simply unrealistic. Usually in shelters there are no free rooms for education. Besides, there are children there of different age categories. It is impossible to gather children aged 5-15 together and seriously teach something," said Mykyta.

He emphasizes that it is really good that all shelters currently provide psychological help.  Instead, educational moments took a back seat.

"I see that not many organizations care about our future. I am worried that these young people will grow up and we will all have to work together with them, be friends, live in the same society. It will be very sad if these children who first encountered COVID, and now the war, will grow up completely unprepared for life. What they lack most now is the fundamental knowledge base. And when the government says it's building an IT center, and kids can't do basic math, it's hard for them to focus for more than a minute on one task, maybe we should deal with such children first, and only then with the rest?" he concluded.