A newly renovated kindergarten in Borodyanka, a war-torn town near Kyiv, has opened its doors on Saturday, the Lithuanian Central Project Management Agency (CPMA) has said.
The reconstruction of the kindergarten, attended by about 120 children, was implemented by the CPMA and financed by the US NGO Hope Foundation, Lithuania and Taiwan. The two countries collectively contributed 500,000 euros to the project.
According to the Ukrainian Education and Science Ministry, around 3,000 schools and kindergartens in the country have been damaged or completely destroyed since the beginning of the war.
The renovated facility was one of Borodyanka’s three kindergartens destroyed by Russian attacks, the CPMA said in a press release.
The kindergarten’s opening ceremony, held on Ukraine’s Independence Day, was attended by the local community, children and their parents, Borodyanka’s Mayor Iryna Zakharchenko, and Lithuanian Deputy Foreign Minister Simonas Šatūnas.
“The rebuilt kindergarten is further proof that Ukraine is moving firmly into the future. I am pleased that Ukraine has so many different partners helping it on this path,” Šatūnas was quoted as saying in the press release.
“We will continue to do our utmost to ensure that children grow up and live in a free and secure Ukraine,” he added.
Iryna Nosova, the director of the kindergarten, said the facility was among the first to be hit by Russia’s attacks in early March 2022.
“We had to operate in another kindergarten where we could only accommodate four groups. Parents were calling us, but we had to turn them down, especially those with very young children because we had neither the space nor the equipment to accommodate them,” she was quoted as saying in the press release.
The CPMA has been actively working in Ukraine since 2017. The agency’s portfolio currently stands at 17.47 billion euros, with 140 million euros allocated for Ukraine.
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