"Pink Panama" is a safe space that gives children back their childhood

From June 1, 2024, the "MARTIN-club" NGO resumed the operation of the "Pink Panama" safe space for children during the war. Financial support for this was provided by the Rotary Club Offenbach-Dreieich . It is an organization with a long and successful charitable history, founded on March 17, 1970.

• Our task is to return childhood to children traumatized by the war, - say the members of the project team. These are young people from 20 to 35 years old who work with children from 4 to 16 years old.

The safe day care space accepts children from IDP families and people from supporting professions (doctors, social workers, police officers, volunteers, rescuers, journalists, etc.). These are mostly children who either lost their homes and their familiar environment destroyed by enemy shelling, or were forced to evacuate together with their parents (guardians) back in 2014 or 2022, on the eve of the occupation of Luhansk and partially Donetsk and Kherson regions.

"Pink Panama" is a space where children can stay for a few hours while their parents are at work, looking for work or on business, get hot food, play, sing, draw, communicate with their peers. In this way, the space team creates conditions for the socialization and integration of children in evacuation conditions. If necessary, the child can work with a speech therapist or a correctional teacher, receive a psychologist's consultation or a course of psychotherapy.

Permanent staff and involved specialists work in the space : social pedagogues, a speech therapist, an English teacher for babies, art therapists (theatre teacher, music and vocal teacher). Volunteers - students of the Pedagogical College also help. Master classes, games - tabletop and mobile, active discussion of interesting topics, singing and reading - a day in "Pink Panama" is rich and interesting.

The staff of the space assesses the needs of each child through a parent (guardian) questionnaire or a personal interview. We can already see that in addition to educational and cultural services, families also need humanitarian aid - stationery, food, medicine, hygiene products. We are trying to gradually solve these issues through the involvement of other services of the "MARTIN-club" NGO.

The space accepts 15-30 children five days a week (Monday-Friday). During the work, 90 electronic questionnaires were filled out. 80% of children need a day stay at the center along with developmental classes. 90% of them are children from immigrant families. The greatest demand is for children 5-7 years old who do not yet go to school. They find themselves in a risk group because they have lost the opportunity to develop according to their age.

Our achievements:

• according to the observations of social educators, many children have a shift in communication, a decrease in the level of anxiety (in parents as well), an improvement in behavior

• according to parents' feedback, children are happy to stay at the center, willingly share their impressions, and want to return to classes in "Pink Panama" and communication with teachers;

• during this time, four single mothers from among IDPs were able to visit doctors and receive inpatient medical services;

• two mothers got official jobs.