Education on a gaming platform. A teacher about the realities of schooling during the war

"It is incredible to see kids playing football and on playgrounds again. Due to the war, almost all children left our settlement, and to see them return brings me such happiness," says Iryna Kornus, a chemistry teacher from a small town in the Kharkiv region. Iryna has worked in education for around 20 years. Her genuine love for children runs in the family: she works at the same school she attended and where her mother and grandmother taught many years ago. This school is located only 40 kilometers from the Russian border.

Even after the war broke out so close to her home, Iryna Kornus chose to stay in her hometown – to continue teaching at the school, take care of her 80-year-old father, and support the local community. Along with her colleagues, she persevered in educating children despite the numerous challenges of Russia’s brutal attacks. She is one of over 655,000 Ukrainian educators who have been able to keep teaching thanks to budget support from the United States. Over nearly two and a half years of the war, the U.S. government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), provided $26.8 billion in direct budget support to the Ukrainian government to help cover essential non-military expenditures, such as school and university staff salaries.

Rescue, healthcare, education: the U.S. government is helping Ukrainians access vital public services during the war

Since the spring of 2022, the US government, through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has been enabling the Ukrainian government to fund critical social expenditures in the face of Russia’s full-scale military aggression.

During this time, the United States became the largest individual country donor of economic assistance to Ukraine, having already provided $26.8 billion in direct budget support.

Disbursed through the World Bank's mechanisms, American funds are directed into the Ukrainian state budget, reimbursing the government's expenditures on salaries for over 1.4 million workers whose uninterrupted work is most crucial for today's survival of Ukrainians and the future recovery of the country—first responders, healthcare workers, educators, and civil servants.

Thanks to US budgetary funding, the Ukrainian government also continues to support the most vulnerable members of the population by providing social assistance to internally displaced persons, low-income families, and others.

Hiding people, documents, and Ukrainian symbols

On the eve of February 24, 2022, Iryna’s school was preparing for temporary relocation. Its building needed to be renovated to accommodate more modern classrooms and a bomb shelter. Instead, in the early days of the invasion, it became an island of safety for the village's residents, who were constantly shelled by the Kremlin’s army.