What happened until now?

Fol­low­ing the Russ­ian attacks on Ukraine on 24th Feb­ru­ary 2022, ECSWE imme­di­ate­ly reached out to mem­bers and part­ners to coor­di­nate our emer­gency sup­port to the Ukrain­ian Wal­dorf move­ment. Actions back then includ­ed a coor­di­nat­ed dona­tion cam­paign to sup­port school com­mu­ni­ties and emer­gency edu­ca­tion and coor­di­nat­ed efforts to offer dis­placed Wal­dorf fam­i­lies accom­mo­da­tion and places in Wal­dorf schools abroad. In March, we also helped to trans­late and dis­sem­i­nate an open let­ter of the Friends of Wal­dorf Edu­ca­tion to the Wal­dorf teach­ers in Europe call­ing for finan­cial sup­port and sol­i­dar­i­ty with their Ukrain­ian col­leagues. Thanks to the dona­tions from indi­vid­u­als, schools and organ­i­sa­tions across Europe and the world, more than 900.000 EUR have been col­lect­ed so far.

What are the most urgent needs right now?

To sur­vive the win­ter, the remain­ing Wal­dorf schools in Ukraine will need finan­cial sup­port to pay for teach­ers’ salaries, to acquire pow­er gen­er­a­tors, to main­tain and heat their build­ings and to invest in bomb shel­ters to safe­ly pro­vide in-per­son teach­ing accord­ing to legal require­ments. The shel­ters must be big enough to accom­mo­date all pupils and co-work­ers of a giv­en school.

The Friends of Wal­dorf Edu­ca­tion have cal­cu­lat­ed that a total of 70.000 € per month are need­ed to ensure con­tin­ued remu­ner­a­tion of our Ukrain­ian col­leagues. The costs for the bomb shel­ters dif­fer sig­nif­i­cant­ly from loca­tion to loca­tion and are there­fore dif­fi­cult to break down into aver­age costs per stu­dent or school. The costs for the school shel­ters built to this date range from a 15.000 € co-pay­ment, for the most­ly pub­licly fund­ed shel­ter in Krivoj Rog, to 120.000 € for the ful­ly pri­vate­ly fund­ed shel­ter of the Stu­peni School in Odessa.

How can you help?

Your dona­tions will help the remain­ing Ukrain­ian Wal­dorf schools to sur­vive the win­ter. For your ori­en­ta­tion: A dona­tion of 115 € is enough to pay the aver­age week­ly salary of one Ukrain­ian Wal­dorf teacher and with 460 € you are cov­er­ing a full month. On the oth­er hand, the amount need­ed to pur­chase 3 pow­er gen­er­a­tors and 3 bat­ter­ies for Dnipro Stein­er School is about 6.500 € total. We are hope­ful that with a joint action we can reach the need­ed amounts, but please know that no dona­tion is too small to count!

You can direct­ly trans­fer your dona­tions to the fol­low­ing bank accounts:

If you need a dona­tion con­fir­ma­tion, please make sure to also indi­cate your postal address.

Why we support these actions?

From the begin­ning of the war in Ukraine, most of our mem­bers have tak­en action in pro­vid­ing help to the Ukrain­ian Wal­dorf com­mu­ni­ty. Either by wel­com­ing refugee stu­dents and fam­i­lies, by send­ing med­ical help or by organ­is­ing dona­tion cam­paigns on their nation­al and local lev­els. In the face of ongo­ing pow­er short­ages in Ukraine, that neg­a­tive­ly effect teach­ing con­di­tions, our Lat­vian mem­ber chose to act upon direct con­nec­tions they have with schools in Ukraine, and we are here to sup­port their efforts. The clos­ing of their dona­tion cam­paign is the Mon­day 19th Decem­ber 2022.

The Friends of Wal­dorf Edu­ca­tion are per­ma­nent guests to our Coun­cil and are reg­u­lar­ly tak­ing part in the Coun­cil meet­ings. Fol­low­ing the Russ­ian attacks on Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022, they have turned most of their resources to pro­vid­ing aid to Ukrain­ian Wal­dorf schools, teach­ers and fam­i­lies by col­lect­ing dona­tions, deploy­ing trau­ma ped­a­gogy experts and help­ing refugee stu­dents and fam­i­lies find their shel­ter in Euro­pean coun­tries. They have numer­ous direct con­nec­tions to schools and teach­ers in Ukraine and are thus able to pro­vide and dis­trib­ute ade­quate sup­port efficiently.

Further steps