I would like children to believe that their words and actions have power: creative writing with young people from Ukraine

“Chciałabym aby dzieci uwierzyły że ich słowa i czyny mają moc.”

“I would like children to believe that their words and actions have power.”

- Workshop participant, Save the Children Poland

It's been a big pleasure to start sharing our series of stories co-published with Save the Children International with colleagues, friends and associated programmes this autumn 2024: Tales from Ukrainian children. As I write, I am preparing to share these books with WHO Romania ahead of delivering a workshop in Bucharest this autumn.

Alongside our 2024 toolkit for story-writing, sharing this important example of co-creation helps us think collectively about how children's voices can impact the world around them. From informing best practices in humanitarian intervention, Child Protection and MHPSS programming, to building emotional connections in vulnerable communities, we are learning all the time. I started to understand more about this from colleagues in Armenia this summer, who have been incorporating step-by-step creative writing practice into their therapeutic work.

A co-created project, every step of the way...

In August 2023, Save the Children International contracted my NGO, Kitabna, to undertake a story-writing project with their Child Protection teams in Poland. This initially involved a capacity-building training for Child Protection and MHPSS staff involved in the facilitation of Child Friendly Spaces (CFS) for Ukrainian children resident in institutional carehomes. in the Pomeranian region. The next step of the project, which continued into 2024, was the creation of a book of children’s stories co-created in their Child Friendly Spaces in care homes. This book would be trilingual: published in the languages of the host community, Polish; an international language, English; and the children's language, Ukrainian, too.

In the end, there were so many great stories: we made three.

Ahead of our workshops in autumn 2023, I met online with Child Protection staff to understand the ways in which they were working with Ukrainian children: supporting CFS creation, supporting child protection programming, listening, ensuring children’s basic needs are met and identifying needed resources collaboratively with other sectors to help deliver needed support. When we asked what their hopes for sharing storytelling was in their work, they told us that they hoped for the following:

• Providing CFS staff and caregivers in care homes tools to connect in a meaningful way with children they support, building trust

• Team feeling relaxed to express themselves and be free and creative

• Enhancing relationships among children and caregivers though expression of their shared stories, concerns, experiences

• To let the outside world hear the voice of children

• Being a less intense way of working with the children (for the team and frontline staff)

• Building a trustful connection between children and caregivers based on respect and listening

• Children being inspired to safely process their experiences and emotions

• Children in centres feel listened to and like someone is standing up for them.

Workshops and fieldwork in Pomerania Provence, northern Poland

November 2023

In Słupsk, with a visit from Cat's dogs

After several months of planning, we agreed to hold 5 days of workshops in Słupsk, a town close to the northern Baltic coast of Poland, which was close to several carehomes we planned to visit so we could share story-writing techniques with children. Staff from Warsaw and the northern region attended the week-long training, where we ran through the main principles of our story-writing methodology: creating a safe space for reading picture books with children, using audio books with children, introducing individual and group storytelling exercises, and simple team book creation.

We quickly decided to make space each day to ask CFS facilitators how they would tailor the activities into their sessions, planning out each activity over an hour-long session, leaving space for introduction and warm up.

"We want to build a trustful connection between children and caregivers based on respect and listening."

Child Protection staff and facilitators worked well to attempt individual and group storytelling, using the mixture of Polish, English-speaking and Ukrainian staff to make sure all stories were translated into the languages in the room. Facilitators also successfully demonstrated how they would recreate the activities for a CFS settings. Perhaps the main component in this was factoring in how long activities would take, given limited time

Writing with teenagers, with (below) a teenager's dialogue between her self and her future adult self, in Russian.

A favourite story of us all was about. a bear and a squirrel, developed into full illustration and design (below).

Following the workshop, we supported the creation of storytelling spaces in the CFS in two different carehomes in Pomerainia province. This was not always easy in the busy lives of the children, between school, mealtimes and leisure time. Nevertheless, facilitators were able to create storytelling circles with younger children, enabling group storytelling, which one facilitator would write down, during or after the activity. In other instances, spaces were created for small groups of teenagers to practice individual and group storytelling with their peers and younger children.

The results were a series of stories, written over the months of November and December. These stories were shared with the communications teams, and I developed the final stories into children's book this year, with input from the children about the artwork. For example, that one character's hair should be blue...

It was great to share some words from Save's Child-Protection Coordinator, Karolina Poplewska-Grabowieka, about her experience of working with Kitabna story-writing and our books in recent presentations:

“The very fact of showing children that they can do something is really great, that their words have power and that there are adults who want to hear these words."

"In my work, I primarily deal with refugee children from foster care. The difficult experiences of this group have a huge impact on their development, expression of their emotions or needs. When programming activities, I focus on strengthening their well-being and showing them how they can find their resources and work with them on self-realization.

Kitabna was the answer to the need for such a program. At first I couldn't quite understand how we were going to implement this project, but during the workshop when I had the opportunity to write my book myself ( with my team) I realized how simple and enjoyable it can be and how much satisfaction it gives.

Transferring the project to activities with our children also turned out to be very enjoyable. In the process, many stories based on children's experiences, many games and creative art activities were created. The very fact of showing children that they can do something really great, that their words have power and that there are adults who want to hear these words.

I currently have the opportunity to conduct training in another project that deals with intercultural integration in the context of working with children and youth, and Kitabna is one of those projects that I show and discuss as a form of integration of culturally mixed peer groups. In my humble opinion, this is an activity that helps integration as a whole of interpersonal activities - after all, nothing brings people together like a jointly completed activity crowned with joint work."

We set out to find out how children's words and actions have power. Right now we can see that the immediate impacts of their words are:

• Multi-lingual books that can be shared with other children in CFS libraries and kits

• A guide for story-writing groups and teaching

• Tools for use in intercultural integration training

• Advocacy tools to present programmes to donors, to support ongoing and new programmes for vulnerable people.