Anne Back in February, Anne read about the reopening of Zherelo Special School in a post on Substack by Anna Bowles (*We highly recommend following Anna.) Anna has written about Zherelo Special School in several posts.
Zherelo Special School
Zherelo Special School is in Zaporizhzhia, only 25 kilometres from the frontline. Deaf children, children with mobility issues and children with Down Syndrome study there.
It used to have many facilities, including rehabilitation, a library, a dormitory for boarders. You can read Anna’s post with photos of the before-and-after state of the premises. It’s heartbreaking to see what it used to be, but hopefully, they will return to this one day. (With the determination of staff to stick by the students, we are sure it will.)
In her post about Zherelo Special School, Anna Bowles told how Zherelo Special School had reopened.
Why did Zherelo Special School have to close?
In Autumn 2023, Zherelo Special School was hit by a missile. Much of the school was either destroyed, or badly damaged. The school was forced to close its doors. Only remote teaching was possible. Reconstruction work is taking place, but no one knows when the original school will be up and running again.
Thanks to some help from international sponsors, Zherelo has been able to rent two rooms elsewhere in Zaporizhzhia – in a semi-basement, as safe from attack as possible. There isn’t enough space for everyone to study there, so students come at different times of the day and the older students study online, then pop in for socialising.
“The new mini-school has been painted, the desks and teaching materials have been moved in, and it’s operating six days a week. There isn’t room for everyone at the same time, but the children attend in groups and are happy to be reunited with their friends.”
Via Anna Bowles, and Olga Klott in the UK, we contacted Irina Rylushko, who teaches at Zherelo Special School. We asked her how we could help. Irina told us that all the children love crafts.
Thanks to the money we received from the Second Pro Am Tournament at Golf Santa Marina, we were able to buy a few things that we thought the children would like, and sent them to Irina Rylushko.
As we’d heard that the school is sometimes without power, we offered to buy and send some of the extremely useful rechargeable lamps that we’ve sent to other schools in Ukraine.
We were delighted to see the Zherelo students at work, creating beautiful pictures and artwork.
And, we couldn’t resist including a few sweet treats for the children too!
The results of the students’ creativity are pretty impressive, aren’t they? Here are a couple of finished works.
And, in the photo below, you can see Anna Bowles with some of the students, and teachers Alla, Natasha and Irina.
