In late February 2022, in the immediate response to mass displacement following Russian attacks on Ukraine, UNICEF’s Adolescent Development and Participation (ADAP) section at Headquarters mobilized a small team of global and national trainers to promote and support use of the Adolescent Kit with young people in Ukraine and those displaced to the surrounding countries of Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Moldova and Lithuania.
Through collaborative workshops with humanitarian aid organizations, the training team and participants conducted a rapid needs assessment of key challenges affecting young displaced Ukranians. With that assessment as the a foundation, the team also developed contextual action plans for programme interventions using the Adolescent Kit programme, which focused on addressing their priority psychosocial needs.
The Adolescent Kit has also been translated into Ukrainian language, and the training team continues to support partners’ planning and capacity to use the Adolescent Kit approaches and activities through virtual facilitator trainings. UNICEF and its partners have also set up a system to identify and train new trainers, enabling them to expand reach of the programme with new teams of facilitators. As the Adolescent Kit programme expands, lead facilitators will be selected in each country to support coordination and shared learning between programmes across the nine countries.
As the ongoing war negatively impacts the Ukrainian volunteers and aid workers responding to the crisis, UNICEF’s efforts also include psychosocial support systems for facilitators. Strengthening facilitators’ wellbeing allows them to support the development and psychosocial well-being of the adolescents they work with, and strengthens their capacity to identify and refer adolescents to specialized services and support when needed.
Learn more about UNICEF’s work in Ukraine. This link takes you to an external site.
