Lifting Hands International has launched a Ukrainian Children’s Story Time project to provide a library of books and directed story time for Ukrainian refugee children.
The project consists of three storytelling sessions per week for children ages 3–6 and 7–13 who live at a refugee shelter with their families. What is so amazing is that two senior pedagogues from the Ukrainian heritage library of Chişinău, Moldova, have selected the books and are drafting the curriculum!
A team of five early education and performing arts teachers will also have storytelling related activities, such as arts and crafts, theatre, puppet shows, and music for the smaller children. For the older group, we will implement reverse storytelling, asking the kids to write their own stories!
We are grateful for the Sunflower Center for hosting the project. They provide a safe space for mothers and children fleeing Ukraine, helping refugees plant a seed for their children in Chișinău, Moldova.
This library and story time project has been specially created in honor of the life of VJ Smith, who passed away on the morning of January 8, 2023. The loving mother of LHI founder and director, Hayley Smith, VJ had an abiding love for the children she taught during her career as an elementary school librarian. Story time with the children was always one of her favorite activities.
This project is also being co-sponsored by the Lovey Cares charitable initiative, founded in honor of Lavinia (Lovey) Gardner Frahm, the long-awaited daughter of LHI chief operations officer, Walker Frahm. Lovey passed away just three days after her birth (in October 2022) due to a rare injury sustained during labor and delivery. Reading stories together was one of the very few activities Lovey was able to experience with her family before her passing.
VJ loved reading to both her library students and also her grandchildren.
Lovey and her family reading together in the NICU.
It is the hope of the Smith family and the Frahm family and all their LHI friends that the LHI Ukrainian Children’s Story Time project will carry on VJ’s legacy of interpersonal kindness and honor Lovey’s life through bringing the joy of stories and literacy to children who have fled their homes in the wake of the tragic war in Ukraine.