Letters to Children in Occupation from the Winners of the All-Ukrainian Pupil Essay competition ‘I Hear You’: A Letter to a Peer in Occupation’
‘One day we will hear each other again in reality.
In the meantime, I hear you with my heart. And I know that you can hear me too…’
From 11 June to 1 September 2024, the NGO CCE “Almenda” held an all-Ukrainian competition of pupil essays “‘I Hear You’: A Letter to a Peer in Occupation”, which was attended by 241 children from different parts of Ukraine.
We held this competition to build understanding and empathy in Ukrainian society for the realities in which children live in the temporarily occupied territories.
And also to find answers to the question:
- What do Ukrainian children want to say to their peers under occupation?
- How can we support children under occupation and make them feel that they are not forgotten?
- How to form an understanding among the younger generation of what their peers are going through in the occupation? And to develop empathy for them?
- We invited students in grades 8-11 to write a letter of support to their peers under occupation.
Some of the contestants themselves had lived through the experience of being under occupation, some had friends who remained in occupation, so they addressed their letters to them.
The essays we received were filled with sincere wishes, words of support, their own stories of being under occupation, sadness, compassion, and hope.
And most importantly, these works showed the readiness of the younger generation here to accept and involve children and young people from TOT in the Ukrainian environment.
Despite the fact that all the works deserve high marks, we have selected 4 winners.
І place
Yelyzaveta Brizhak,
pupil of the 9th grade of the Zolote Lyceum No.5,, Hirske territorial community, Sievierodonetsk Raion of Luhansk Region.
II place
Grizlyuk Karina,
pupil of the 9th grade of “Lyceum of Natural Sciences”, Kropyvnytsk City Council”
III place
Sofiia Bazai,
pupil of the 10th grade of “Lozova Lyceum No.1”, Lozova City Council of Kharkiv region
III place
Yevhenii Hohin,
pupil of the 10th grade of Kherson Physical and Technical Lyceum, Kherson City Council
.
So, we invite you to read the letters and share them with them, because these letters contain strength, support and hope.
