Expanding on the $5 million Ukraine First Emergency Response grant announced in March, 'Education Cannot Wait' (ECW) on Thursday announced a new, initial $1.5 million allocation to support the education in emergencies response for the Ukraine refugee crisis in Moldova while on mission with strategic partners. This new allocation brings ECW's total Ukraine crisis education response to $6.5 million to date, IPN reports, quoting a press release.
The war is putting children and adolescents living in Ukraine at grave risk. Recent estimates indicate that almost five million refugees have fled Ukraine, with an additional 7.1 million people internally displaced. All school-age children in Ukraine have seen their education disrupted by the conflict, and according to the latest estimates, more than 900 education facilities have been destroyed or damaged in the fighting, and as many as 3.3 million school-aged children require urgent humanitarian assistance.
According to recent reports, approximately 400,000 people have crossed the border into Moldova fleeing the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine since February. While the majority continued their journey towards other neighboring countries and Western Europe, Moldova hosts today an estimated 100,000 refugees. These include about 50,000 refugee girls and boys, of whom only 1,800 are currently enrolled in school.
“Refugee children from Ukraine have fled a brutal war and have arrived dispossessed and traumatized in Moldova. They are very vulnerable and need immediate support. Public schools are open to refugee children, however the capacity is over-stretched and there is a need for urgent mental health and psycho-social services, sanitation, and teachers to respond to the influx of pre-school and school-aged refugee children,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait
For her part, Maha Damaj, UNICEF Country Representative in Moldova, said that together with the partners, UNICEF works to help the refugee children coming from Ukraine to study in a safe and encouraging environment, supporting their resistance to war trauma.
The new ECW allocation will respond to the rapidly evolving situation in support of the government of Moldova's normative framework that is allowing the inclusion of refugee children into the national education system.
During the high-level mission, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) announced an additional $18 million contribution to the ECW global trust fund to further support ECW education responses in crisis-impacted countries across the globe. This contribution makes the US the third largest donor to ECW - the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises - after Germany and the UK.
