Rebuilding Futures: Renata’s Pursuit of Education in Romania Against All Odds
After 365 days of war, the story of Renata is the story of over 2.8 million people who crossed the border into Romania seeking safety from the outbreak of war.
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Leading her mother by the hand towards their apartment in Bucharest, ten-year-old Renata glances towards the park, and her eyes light up as she points to children ice-skating. “This is my skating rink!” she exclaims, her breath a cloud of fog in the chilly afternoon. “I love it so much! It reminds me of home”.
But there wasn’t much outdoor play at home in Ukraine before Renata and her family fled from the war to find refuge in Romania. By the time they left, Renata’s home city of Odessa looked nothing like the place she remembers growing up in, where she would go to school and meet up with her friends outside. Her last memories of home are strewn with sirens wailing into the night and the constant thudding of missiles echoing close and far. For her last months at home, as schools closed and hostilities built up, Renata spent all her time hiding indoors.
After 365 days of war, the story of Renata is the story of over 2.8 million people who crossed the border into Romania seeking safety from the outbreak of war. She is one of the almost 40,000 children from Ukraine whose families found refuge and settled temporarily in Romania, after they were forced to flee from their homes by endless months of escalating armed conflict, growing destruction and fear.
“We needed to flee Odessa after schools were closed, because we were leaving Renata at home alone every day when we were going to work. Our building didn’t have a shelter, so at nine years old, she knew that the sirens screaming meant grabbing Alpina, our dog, and rushing into the bathroom, which I thought was the safest space in our apartment. After a building was hit nearby and a woman with a three-month-old baby was killed, I thought we couldn’t be sure that the next missile would not strike the building we lived in. I was terrified that in a moment, I could lose my family, my daughter,” remembers Natalia, Renata’s mother. Having never left Ukraine, the family was afraid to make the journey, but they left anyway.
They arrived at the Romanian border after a stressful trip, and volunteers helped them get to Bucharest, where they were first taken to a packed refugee centre. Natalia blinks back tears as she recalls, “I will always remember that morning. We arrived before dawn, it was raining, and we were all so tired. Renata was not used to seeing so many people in one place, stumbling on others sleeping on mats, on the floor, getting a moment of rest wherever they could. She started tugging on my hand and backing away, crying, pleading with us to take her home. My husband and I felt so helpless then – our daughter was crying, I was crying, my husband was crying.”
Apart from the physical risks caused by armed conflict and hard journeys seeking refuge, tens of thousands of Ukrainian children just like Renata are facing countless other challenges that come with living with distress and uncertainty every day. Being unable to continue their formal education, being disconnected from their extended family and friends, not knowing if they are safe, constantly wondering if they will see their homes again, are factors that pose serious risk to their mental health.
For Renata, life started looking brighter when volunteers helped move her family to a different centre, where there were other families with children, and they had their own room. “My first memory in Romania is how much I wanted to have a place to live, to call our own, and a school to go to, just like I had in Odessa, at home,” Renata says, as she thinks back to her first days in Bucharest.
It didn’t take long before Renata’s mother was given an opportunity to keep her daughter’s education on track, and to offer support to children of fellow refugees. Natalia’s excellent language skills meant that not one month had passed from arriving in Bucharest before she could speak Romanian fluently.
She started collaborating with the ANAID Association in Bucharest, one of the NGOs UNICEF supports to implement refugee response programmes. UNICEF and ANAID opened an education hub where children from Ukraine have a safe space to continue their education online, and to receive Romanian lessons, a crucial component in supporting their access to the Romanian national education system. This is where Natalia was able to help, by teaching Romanian language to refugee children in the summer school.
“I think it’s great that my mom helped me and other Ukrainian children learn Romanian during the summer,” Renata says, and then adds “My mom was by my side every day.” The centre gave Natalia and Renata a safe place to go together, so they could be with each other during this hard transition. “As a parent, this year taught me to be a little warmer, to hear what my child is telling me,” Natalia says.
Renata’s progress over the summer is a testament to the real impact that the UNICEF-supported activities have had on the lives of the 150 Ukrainian children who participated in the summer school. Studying hard and impressively reaching near-fluency in Romanian in two months, she passed the entrance assessment, including a Romanian language test, and secured a place in a state school, where she started fourth grade in September.
Being the only Ukrainian child in the school has not slowed Renata down. She is a happy child, who enjoys going to school and is diligent about her classwork and homework. She grins as she says, “My favorite subject is math, I’m good at it.”
Her mother can barely contain her pride for the way Renata has managed to flourish in these tough times. “I did not see this grit in her before, when we were in Ukraine. I am incredibly proud of this ambition she has discovered in herself to succeed and make the best of her life here.” Her smile brings warmth into the room as she adds, finally, “I wish my daughter would no longer know what war is, what alarms are, or that people are being killed. I wish for her to have a healthy life. I wish for her dreams to come true.”
Since the start of the war, Ukrainian children have been robbed of 365 days of learning, play and memories they would have made at home. As refugee numbers increased in Romania, UNICEF set up play and learning hubs, provided individual learning materials for over 17,000 children, and established programmes enabling over 8,000 children from Ukraine in continuing their education. UNICEF is actively assisting the inclusion of refugee children into the national education system, by supporting the Ministry of Education in the provision of Romanian language classes, expanding learning services in Romanian and Ukrainian, and training teachers for responding to the needs of children learning in difficult circumstances.
