Eighty-five parents and one hundred and twenty-eight children have participated, since December 2023, in a parental education program, where they learned how to overcome stressful situations, thus improving their well-being. This is the “Parental Education Program for Families Affected by the War in Ukraine”, launched in 2023 in Chisinau, Causeni and Palanca village from Stefan Voda district.
According to Irina Spivacenco, project manager at “Partnerships for Every Child” /P4EC/, this program is offered to parents affected by the war in Ukraine, to support them in fulfilling their role as parents. “Four sessions are delivered in 2 days, including joint parent-child sessions, to help families reduce their stress, take care of themselves, help their children understand their emotions, know the ways of caring for children in crisis situations, all of this organized in a friendly and fun environment. The program also encourages the development of receptive relationships between parents and children. In the end, all children receive a voucher to purchase books or school supplies, educational games”.
Parents say this program teaches them how to keep a nice and healthy relationship with their children:
- “The program taught us to recognize our reactions to emotions, but also our emotional state. We also learned how to control our emotions”.
- “An emotionally balanced mother is an emotionally balanced family”.
- “The subjects of this program fully reflected the variety of strategies that can be useful in crisis situations”.
- “I have become more balanced in crisis situations. I have also realized that these do not affect only my family, as I used to think! I have realized that all families have similar problems, which allowed us to discuss and analyze solutions together”.
The “Parental Education Program for Displaced Families from Ukraine” includes activities that parents can try at home and encourages group participants to keep in touch with each other after the finalization of the program, to create a support group, etc.
The program is conducted in the Republic of Moldova until June 2024 and will cover a total of 500 children and parents from the three regions mentioned above. It is implemented within the project “Integrated Humanitarian Response in Ukraine, Poland, Moldova and Romania for Ukrainians and Third-Country Nationals Affected by the Conflict” funded by the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany through the Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe (DKH), implemented by APSCF, in partnership with P4EC.