Rinat Akhmetov to Children. Peaceful Summer

Launch date: 2015

In 2015, it became obvious that children living right next to the area of armed conflict need psychological rehabilitation. A huge stress, shocks and horrors they had to live through could not pass without leaving a trace in their souls.

The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation’s psychologists raised alarm: if these children are not relieved from their worries, they would come back to them in the future in the form of neuroses and psychosomatic disorders. That’s how the project Rinat Akhmetov to Children. Peaceful Summer was born.

The project’s participants are children aged between 8 and 15 years who live in the Ukrainian government-uncontrolled territory and in the “grey zone”, and also, internally displaced children. The majority of the participants are from families with many children or single-parent families, or are pupils of family-type children’s homes.

Main areas of activity:

• psychological rehabilitation and full-fledged rest for children who lived for a long time in the area of armed conflict. The project’s most important objective is to help these kids overcome the horror of constant shelling, let this burden go, and move forward;
• having these children attended by professional psychologists who completed a War Trauma course: using active games and art therapy to help children reduce anxiety, increase self-confidence, develop fantasy and imagination, and get rid of fears;
• teaching children the rules of behavior in extraordinary situations;
• group classes conducted by psychologists and aimed to stabilize and improve psycho-emotional state of children.

In 2015-2019, over 4,500 children from Donbass participated in the program.