Storytelling and fairy tales to improve Ukrainian children's mental health and promote socialization

The story of Anastasia, a Ukrainian refugee, and her intuition and determination to run an educational centre in Chisinau, with IOM support, to enhance the mental health of Ukrainian children and foster their social relationships through storytelling and fairy tales, tailored to their needs.

Anastasia, 37, is originally from Mykolaiv, Ukraine, one of the cities hardly hit by Russian bombs at the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine.

In the first hours of the attack, Anastasia was at home with her two children, Polina, 11, and Vladimir, 7. She heard the loud blasts and immediately took the decision to look for a safe place nearby, hoping for the end of that nightmare.

Yet, the days passed. The shelter, lacking water and electricity, protected her children from the explosions but not from their fears. After two weeks, at night, in the darkness of the shelter and in a sky lit by explosions, Polina approached her mother and whispered in her ear: "take me and Vladimir to a safer place".

The next morning, Anastasia, Polina and Vladimir fled Ukraine to the Republic of Moldova. They went directly to Chisinau where a relative who lived in the capital opened the door of her apartment to host them.
 

“We stayed there for a month. Then I decided to rent an apartment for myself and bring my mother and dog from Ukraine. A place was offered to us at a very advantageous price after the owner learned about our story. He is a Moldovan man and was very kind to us.”

Anastasia's story is one of courage, determination, intuition and resilience.

A month after arriving in Moldova, she found a job as a music teacher in a centre for Ukrainian refugees, drawing on her 30 years of experience as a pianist.

Her work mainly involved helping Ukrainian children in need of mental health support. During the lessons, some of them were aggressive, others hid under the tables or were unable to socialize with the other children.

One day, a colleague asked Anastasia to use storytelling as a tool to help relieve the children and their parents’ traumas.

“It was an extraordinary experience that gave me so much. When we started with storytelling, our goal was mainly to speak Ukrainian with the children and tell them about Ukrainian folklore. The impact of storytelling on children went beyond all expectations and I realized that I could do much more.”

Recognizing the power of storytelling and her own professional experience with children since she lived in Ukraine, Anastasia decided to found an educational centre in Chisinau called Soulmate.

The first challenge she faced was finding a suitable place in the city with a rental cost she could afford. Starting over in a new country, she also had to cover the costs of equipping the centre with furniture, decoration, and materials for activities. Despite the difficulties, she managed to open Soulmate.

This was when Anastasia learned about IOM’s small business grants scheme for Ukrainian women entrepreneurs, implemented under the project “Ukraine Response to support refugees from Ukraine across Europe”, funded by the US Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM).

After submitting a proposal to IOM, she was awarded a small grant in May 2024 to support her with the costs of improving and growing her business, recognizing its potential impact for Ukrainian refugees and their hosting community. This allowed her to expand the activities offered at Soulmate and reach a larger number of children and parents.
 

“I took the risk, and I made it.”

Today, Soulmate offers music courses for children, where they learn to play the piano, ukulele and guitar. An English club for Ukrainian teenagers was founded with the assistance of Peace Corps volunteers, and transformative games were created by a Ukrainian psychologist. Anastasia manages the Centre and continues her work with storytelling.

“I started writing my first fairy tales on Mother's Day. Sometimes, during the lessons, we discuss these fairy tales with colleagues and change the theme based on the children's behaviours and emotions, so that the stories are more suited to their needs.”
 

Anastasia and her team have already created 20 original stories. As they share them during the lessons, they observe the children’s expressions and reactions to understand how the stories influence their relationships with others.

"Sometimes children don't understand what is good and what is bad, and through these fairy tales they learn to build relationships and respect each other."

Although the lessons at Soulmate are not in Romanian, Moldovan children have been recently starting to attend them, as parents who speak Ukrainian have volunteered to translate.

“Ukrainian and Moldovan children have similar wishes, that is to socialize, carry out relaxing activities, and receive emotional support. They are very close to each other."

Anastasia thinks big and makes it happen. For the next few months, the Centre is also organizing a summer camp, where children will also be able to write their own fairy tales.

No doubts: “We will print the book with their fairy tales."

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Soulmate is one of the 28 small businesses owned by Ukrainian refugees and Moldovans which received an IOM small business grant thanks to the generous financial support of the US Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), within the “Ukraine Response to support refugees from Ukraine across Europe” project.