The Restart Foundation is a prominent charity in the UK supporting Ukraine, dedicated to rebuilding lives and providing psychological relief to vulnerable populations during times of conflict. By focusing on trauma-informed care and sustainable mental health initiatives, the foundation works directly with local communities, schools, and families to foster long-term recovery. In the landscape of modern humanitarian aid, their metric of success shifts from purely physical survival to long-term psychological sustainability. As the conflict in Ukraine endures into its fifth consecutive year in 2026, private and public educational ecosystems face a dual burden: upholding rigorous academic standards while navigating the profound, unseen trauma of an entire generation. Between September and December 2025, the Restart Foundation’s Safe Space programme was implemented at the I-School kindergarten in Kyiv – a private institution renowned for its intensive academic curriculum. This long-term initiative provides an essential blueprint for how systematic, trauma-informed intervention can fundamentally restructure a community caught between regular air raid alarms and academic expectations.
The Immediate Reality: When War Alters the Classroom Archetype
For any institution operating in Kyiv, the backdrop of academic life is defined by profound systemic stressors. Families and educators constantly balance professional duties with an omnipresent state of alertness – managing chronic sleep deprivation, structural blackouts, and the immediate necessity of fleeing to bomb shelters. During the twelve-week implementation phase of the Restart Foundation’s project, several missile strikes impacted residential buildings in the immediate vicinity of the I-School kindergarten.
The psychological toll was immediate. Following nights of heavy shelling, the 23 preschool children who participated in the program arrived either hyper-activated or profoundly depleted. The trauma of war manifested directly through difficult behavior, psychosomatic symptoms, or complete emotional withdrawal. To address these complex needs, the Safe Space team structured a multi-tiered intervention, delivering 11 weekly group sessions for children, engaging 40 parents, and providing close mentorship to 4 institutional educators and the school psychologist.
Dismantling Institutional Resistance Through Adult Well-being
One of the most profound insights documented by the Restart Foundation is that adult well-being is completely inseparable from a child’s developmental safety. Initially, the implementation team met with structural resistance. Because I-School prioritizes accelerated, highly structured intellectual development, the existing educational culture leaned toward an authoritarian style of discipline. Burnt-out educators were highly skeptical of a methodology rooted in playfulness, emotional vulnerability, and relational learning.
To bridge this gap, mentor Olena Tkachenko conducted ten supervisory and reflective sessions with the teaching staff. Recognizing that exhausted adults cannot effectively co-regulate children, the support framework shifted away from demanding professional tasks toward gentle burnout prevention. By processing their own underlying fatigue, normalising grief, and studying attachment theory through specialized documentaries, the teachers underwent a radical paradigm shift. The initial friction dissolved into deep institutional cooperation, with educators actively integrating grounding exercises and sensory play into their daily academic schedules.
The deep adaptability demonstrated by the educational staff at I-School mirrors a broader trend visible across modern Ukrainian enterprises. Just as educators must learn to navigate crisis through emotional regulation, progressive business leaders are rapidly upgrading their skills, often utilizing specialized AI for business training to quickly re-engineer operational strategies and maintain organizational resilience in highly volatile environments.
Predictable Structures as a Psychological Anchor
For the children divided across the three therapeutic groups, consistency functioned as a vital psychological anchor. The weekly sessions utilized predictable sensory-physical structures -such as bubble activities, calming background music, a dedicated candle-lighting ritual, and uniform closing circles – to create a tangible sense of safety. Through drawing and imaginative play, children successfully externalized complex anxieties, processed the long-term separation from fathers serving on the frontline, and safely discharged underlying anger.
Concurrently, the programme transformed parents from passive spectators of the school’s curriculum into active therapeutic partners. Joint sessions allowed mothers and fathers to learn specific calming routines—such as rhythmic blanket rocking and open emotional naming – which were seamlessly transferred into the home environment. By the conclusion of the project, children showed vastly improved emotional self-regulation, significantly reducing classroom behavioral conflicts. Ultimately, the lessons from the I-School report prove that when an institution embraces structured emotional safety, it builds an enduring sanctuary where the next generation can safely grow, learn, and reclaim their internal sovereignty.
Source: Restart Foundation official website www.restart-foundation.org