Under the blue-yellow rainbow, UK students help

"Now their Czech class is over, they're going to the playground. In the afternoons, we have hip hop classes and acting classes. Several times a week we have canistherapy," says Matěj Šulc, one of the main coordinators of the adaptation centre in Prague's Chodov district and a student at the Evangelical Theological Faculty of Charles University. He is one of those who sought ways to help the refugees immediately after Putin's Russia militarily invaded Ukraine in February.

Newcomers feel like they are in a maze in a multi-storey office building in the middle of a housing estate in Prague's Chodov district. Although they pass door after door and occasionally some old name tags of former office occupants, there is no doubt that they are in a children's centre. The walls are plastered with pictures of animals and children's themes, and alongside the brightly coloured ones, rainbows of two colours - blue and yellow - appear on the walls. The former advertising panels of the company that provided the building free of charge for the adaptation centre have been turned into display boards where the children present their drawings. As we walk together through the endless labyrinth of doors and corridors, Matěj points out one in particular - a drawing of a tank with a peace dove perched on the cannon barrel by its young author.

"In April there was nothing here but bare walls and some leftover office furniture. Adapting it to the needs of the children and equipping it was one of our first tasks. Most of the furniture was moved in by volunteers from our faculty," Matěj smiled as he recalled how much work they had already done in the past four months.

He also brought his friend and fellow faculty member Eliška Roll to Chodov to help him. "There is so much work here that it would support at least one more person, but unfortunately there is no money for that," Matěj lamented.

He himself came to the centre, which was set up by the non-profit Organisation for Refugee Aid, by a detour from the Main Railway Station, where he helped refugees find their way around when they arrived in Prague as a volunteer.

Today, 150 children (most of them from eastern Ukraine) aged between three and 15 years old attend the adaptation centre every day. In addition to Czech language and local customs, they learn about the culture of the country, go for walks around Prague, to exhibitions and museums.

Psychologists from Ukraine also work in the centre, canistherapy and art therapy take place regularly, Eliška added. "We have to work carefully with the children. We don't know what each one has been through. It happened to us, for example, when we went to the cinema with them, that as soon as the lights went out in the hall, one of the smaller ones started crying in fright. You can't guess in advance what might upset them."

The children are divided into groups according to age, each group always has at least one adult who speaks Ukrainian or Russian. One of the groups is led by Dimitrij, originally from Russia (we do not give his surname for his safety, ed.), who will start studying at DAMU in the autumn. "At the beginning, the children and I talked about where I'm from and why I'm here. They accepted it without any reservations," he smiled. He himself has been living in the Czech Republic for a year. "I didn't want to live in Russia, I couldn't say what I was thinking there. But I still have my mother and sister in Russia. When my mom and I call each other and talk about the war in Ukraine, she repeats what she hears in the official media," he sighed.

At the centre, children can also meet American interns and people from other countries. Some of the children are taught Czech by Lamis Alhajaleh, a native of Syria. "I've lived here for eighteen years. I have my own experience of what it's like to learn Czech as a foreigner, so maybe I understand them more in some ways. But they are quite good at it. Even though some of them are not very motivated to learn the language, they believe that they will soon return home to Ukraine," the lecturer noted.

Matěj also spoke about the fact that many children from the centre hope for this to happen. However, most of them have already enrolled in Czech schools. "But we still have children who have not managed to enrol. We are counting on gradually reducing the number of children in the centre, unless something unforeseen happens," Matěj explained, adding that the centre's operations can only be maintained thanks to financial support from the Ministry of Education and private sponsors.

"The uncertainty that everyone lives with here is probably the most intense experience for me. We have a tutor here from Ukraine. She supports four children on her salary. We still didn't know if our centre would get more money and be able to continue. And she kept coming to me, asking about it, and I had nothing to say to her. On top of that, her accommodation was ending, two of her children had failed to enrol in school, and they were blasting Zhytomyr, where she is from. She is experiencing existential uncertainty of a completely different dimension than we have ever experienced," Matej reflected.

The two coordinators at the centre have experienced countless similar moments that can affect a person in such a way that they adjust their own attitude to life. Even Eliška recalled one of them. "When I started working here, a seemingly simple sentence touched me - 'Today they started shelling Severodonetsk.' One little boy stopped talking completely that day. I realized that this one sentence summed up the entire trauma that the children were experiencing. That's all the more reason to try to help them. And so I'm glad that, even after all these months of the war, we still have a lot of people coming to us who want to help."

Author: Helena Zdráhalová (editorially abridged); Photo: Vladimír Šigut