Ukraine: Tuscany Today, the story of Kateryna, who fled the war. Now he helps refugee children in Siena
Kateryna’s story is that of a welcome that is transformed into a service for others. Arriving with the child in Siena four days after the outbreak of the war, she made her knowledge of the Italian language available to her to help those who, like her, turned to the diocesan Caritas to obtain a home. The story of her is told by the Fisc newspaper “Toscana Oggi”. She is a child psychologist in a nursery school in central Ukraine, and for some she serves at the Pascoli school to be with the boys while their mothers take the Italian course. “Since I speak Italian – explains Kateryna to Toscana Oggi -, I offered my availability to help people who, like me, fled the war and so they proposed to me to carry out this service at the Pascoli school. While I entertain the parents together with the Italian courses, making them play and have fun with another musician boy who makes them play some instruments. I also worked as a cultural mediator in another school where I helped the children translate what the teacher taught them. I made myself available to Caritas to make those who work there understand what a refugee needs “.
The psychologist tried to communicate games that can help children to and meet new people: “These activities can help them to meet Italian children and make new friends. In the meantime, during the game, I try to teach him a few words in Italian. I go to this school every day, from Monday to Friday, and the children are between two and twelve years old ”. The first few days, she adds, “the children didn’t talk about it much, but they thought about having fun, someone was more on the sidelines. Then after a week they started to tell how they got out of their country, someone told me that the father is still in Ukraine; other children want to go home because they have left their friends there ”.
For about a month, seven mothers with seven disabled children, who arrived from Ukraine, have been welcomed at the former seminary of Montarioso. Kateryna met them at Mercy “when I went to be a cultural mediator, translating their needs. The mothers are upset because they don’t know what awaits them, the children need special care and they don’t know how to go forward and what this country can dare to their children ”.
Kateryna comes from Kamenets-Podolsky, a city on the Smotryc River in western Ukraine. Her desire is to return home one day to be able to continue working with the children, with the awareness that it will not be easy to remove the traumas left by the war in them.