On 30 November, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine signed a memorandum of understanding with the Zhytomyr City Council and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Ukraine to create new standards for shelters.

The aim is to create design and technical documentation and design projects for shelters in educational institutions, which will be used to build new shelters in schools and kindergartens in Ukraine.

These shelter designs will take into account children’s needs for psychological and physiological comfort and will comply with the new state building codes.

The developed project documentation will be publicly available to all communities in Ukraine and uploaded to the Diia app. This will allow all communities to save money and significantly reduce the time it takes to start building shelters.

As early as 2024, Zhytomyr City Council will equip the first shelters to the new standards in the city’s educational institutions. In the future, the Ministry of Education and Science will use these standard projects to help build shelters across the country, so that every child has access to quality education even during the war.

As part of the memorandum, design and costing documentation will be prepared for kindergartens with a capacity of 100, 150, 200 and 250 children, and schools with a capacity of 200, 300, 500 and 700 children.

This initiative is an important contribution to ensuring a continuous educational process. Thanks to the shelters, the children will continue to receive a quality education in a comfortable and safe environment.