Anastasiia Svoboda and the Academy of Care: Healing War-Affected Children Through the Geometry of Care

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/12/03

Anastasiia Svoboda is the founder and director of the Academy of Care, a Ukrainian NGO dedicated to cultivating psychological resilience, empathy, and nonviolence among children. Her work began as a simple nightly ritual with her daughter during the first days of the full-scale invasion—a practice they called the “Miracle Game,” focused on recognizing small moments of hope amid crisis. This ritual evolved into a nationwide methodology now used by more than 500 schools and 30,000 children. Under Svoboda’s leadership, the Academy develops evidence-informed anti-bullying programs, mental-health support tools, and accessible daily practices that help young people navigate the stresses of war.

In this interview with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Svoboda outlines how the Academy of Care grew from a “Miracle Game” with her daughter into a national system of psychological support for children in wartime Ukraine. Using the MaPanda app, psychologists interact with children through animated characters, lowering anxiety and building trust. The Academy’s focus now spans three fronts: the “Here and Now” program for children of defenders and traumatized families, teacher-oriented Lesson Care modules on bullying and emotions, and in-school diagnostic tools for ongoing mental health monitoring. Svoboda reports a 94% improvement in emotional well-being and a 70% long-term practice retention rate, emphasizing collaboration, partnerships, and a permanent startup mindset.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: First, what do you consider an essential strand of the Care Academy’s work—the core part as we move toward 2026?

Anastasiia Svoboda (w/ Interpreter Liza): I will answer, and then you can add a little more. Since 2022, following the full-scale Russian invasion, we have provided psychological support through animated characters. The child does not see a psychologist directly; instead, they interact with an animated character through the MaPanda application, a Ukrainian tool for online learning and therapy for children. This helps us create a connection and establish trust between the child and the specialist.

We found partners who supported us for four years in our broader work with children and families, and thanks to this cooperation, thousands of children have received free psychological help. Now we work with people of all ages—children, families, teachers, and communities.

We provide support to children in a way that remains unusual in Ukraine. We use the MaPanda application, where a child sees an animated character on the screen. This animated character is controlled in real time by a psychologist or teacher.

This narrows the emotional gap because the child can believe in and trust this character more easily than a stranger on a video call. That is how we started—peer-to-peer, child-to-character. After that, we began searching for partners who were interested in this idea. Then we started another project that involved many different people. For example, we developed projects to include grandmothers, who received basic psychological training so they could provide emotional support and talk with children. We also launched the “Lesson Care” project for teachers. Basically, we work with different groups: psychological projects for children and their families, psychological projects for older adults, and projects that help children and older adults connect.

We also began working with teachers and providing them with various materials, lesson plans, and cartoons they can use in their classrooms. Our organization continues to grow. Now we focus not only on psychological support but also on integrating psychological support into the educational process.

Jacobsen: What programs do you want to keep alive for the next academic year? You review programs and decide what is carried forward to the following year. What are we planning for next year?

Svoboda: Next year, we will launch a mental support project for around 1,500 children. This is the “Here and Now” project,

where we provide support to children of defenders of Ukraine: veterans, active-duty soldiers, fallen heroes, those in captivity or missing, as well as children with physical disabilities and trauma-related needs. Next year, we will continue this work and develop programs for children with special educational needs, because they also need psychological support. We are now testing a product hypothesis: a project in which

children will have regular diagnostic sessions to understand their current psychological state during the educational process, without overburdening them. We have three main focuses, and I will upload the details for you. First of all, we are launching our new project “Here and Now” right now. The first focus is psychological support—specifically for children from four to nine years old, which matches the primary age group MaPanda works with.

Our participants are children from soldiers’ families, heroes’ families, and veterans’ families, as well as children who have experienced loss or trauma, for example, when a father who was a soldier has passed away. We also help in those cases.

The second focus is our education project, which supports teachers and schools with tools and content that integrate psychological care into daily lessons. The third focus is our new idea, a product we will test and refine based on feedback from children, parents, and educators.

We want to test our idea to understand whether it will succeed. We will test our concept, which focuses on diagnostic tools within the educational process. We want to share with teachers the tools they can use to assess their students’ mental health in schools.

We are working with psychologists, and it seems that support for children’s mental health is now moving beyond the boundaries of educational institutions. In fact, educational institutions must keep this focus; otherwise, we will lose results. Nastia asked me to add that we now have many projects in Ukraine focused on mental health outside schools—programs that help families and help children. Yes. But we understand that we need to focus on schools because children spend most of their time there. We need to focus on mental health during the educational process. That is why we have this new idea, and we want to try it next year.

Jacobsen: What are the significant factors for sheltered children in mental health during war? What are the critical concerns with children’s mental health?

Svoboda: What we see during the war is that children’s mental health is always at risk because they face many psychological challenges, and they go through crisis periods. But when you have a war, all these periods multiply—two times, three times—and adults who are experiencing the war cannot always help children. In this case, we must support adults so they can support themselves and their children.

If this does not happen, then we will have a very active generation experiencing PTSD.

First, when we talk about the war in Ukraine, we know we have many risks for children’s mental health. The situation creates many different traumas and psychological processes. For example, a child can have panic attacks, breathing difficulties, or overwhelming emotions that they do not know how to handle.

Even if a child does not understand what is happening—if they are four years old, for example—they still feel in their body that something is wrong. So we can name these risks, but more importantly, we know we have many areas where we must provide mental health support. We also need to teach parents. We need to involve parents, teachers, and adults so they can help not only the children but also themselves. We need to create a circle of support—not only for the child but for every part of that circle.

Without war, children already face many challenges and developmental crisis periods. War intensifies these. We need to remember all the crises we experience as we grow. It is not simple to live through these crises—to become a three-year-old child or a five-year-old child—but war makes these periods more intense and more difficult.

So we have many crises in our lives, and war does not help us live through them or understand them. If we do not address this now, we will have a new generation with many traumas and PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder.

Jacobsen: This connects to bullying. Do mental health challenges make bullying more likely, or do they affect the types of bullying?

Svoboda: Of course. Children are deeply stressed. They do not know how to live with their traumas, crises, and challenges. They also lack a peaceful, supportive environment to experience and process them. That can create situations of bullying. We have to work on emotional flexibility and emotional intelligence, and give children different options and tools for experiencing emotions in healthy, ecological ways.

We need to help children learn to manage their emotions in a safe, healthy way. We want to help them develop emotional flexibility and teach them tools for emotional flexibility and general emotional regulation. Children right now are often in a state of “fight or run.” As a result, bullying becomes more common. I want to add that many children feel they can either run or fight, and this constant stress influences their behaviour.

Jacobsen: You have the “Stop Bullying: Where Has Rudyk Gone?” care lesson. What is it, and how is it being taught?

Svoboda: These lessons focus on bullying and emotional intelligence. They address different components of family life—questions like “Is my family normal?”—and they teach listening, inclusiveness, and acceptance of difference. These lessons help unify the class and give teachers instruments and opportunities to work with children on complex topics in simple language.

Lesson Care is a series of monthly lessons. The main idea is to discuss complex, difficult topics in simple, understandable terms. We address critical issues such as bullying, emotional regulation, self-acceptance, and the acceptance of otherness—accepting people who are not like me. These lessons give teachers ready-made educational tools they can use directly with children.

There is a cartoon video. Our Academy develops the content in cooperation with partners. There are classroom tasks and a family task. We designed it so that children bring these game-based activities home, creating a reinforcing cycle of learning.

We also have support from the Ministry of Education. We work with them and take their recommendations about how such lessons should be structured. The format includes a video—a cartoon—and a teacher’s guide with all the classroom tasks they need.

The games, that is how we create this circle of support. The games are simple and enjoyable for children, and they participate willingly. One example is called “Podiaka-Morkvyaka.” It is difficult to translate; it is a playful rhyme involving the word “carrot.” It is simply a funny, engaging term for children.

Jacobsen: Your practice includes games for classroom activities and home tasks. They are interactive, funny, and bright. Children want to take them home. You also have printable materials that are colourful and visually engaging. This motivates participation because visual design helps children engage with the lessons. You have reached over 30,000 children in more than 500 schools. What recent cases or stories convince you that the geometry-of-care approach is an appropriate way to change children’s lives profoundly? I mean, how your care-based approach to education impacts children’s lives. We touched on mental wellness and calming effects earlier.

Svoboda: We have two categories of results. First, psychological support. Second, educational projects for teachers. In our psychological support programs, 94 percent of participants show improved emotional states, with aggression-related manifestations decreasing. Family environments also improve, and the family is the child’s primary support system.

Our task is to maintain this support long term. The numbers confirm this. Even a year after completing the program, 70 percent of participants still use the practices and tools we taught them.

That long-term outcome was our goal. It was essential to ensure that families continued using the tools not only during the project, but afterward in their daily lives. Seventy percent of maintaining them after a year is a strong result for us.

Jacobsen: How does this make the parents feel? How does this work make you feel?

Svoboda: I will try to translate the idea clearly. Care—turbota—is one of our central values. Our care and support must extend not only to participants but also to our team. Support is something we give outwardly and inwardly.

When people join our team or our projects, they often say it is essential for them to contribute to Ukraine’s victory. But victory for Ukrainians is not only about winning the war. It is also about rebuilding Ukraine.

We ask new team members why they have come to us and what their purpose is. The answer is usually the same: they want to help and support Ukraine and contribute to our future, not only by surviving the war, but by helping children and helping the country recover as a nation.

Returning to your question about how we feel: we believe that every day we create a minor miracle. We give children the opportunity to be children. Every participant receives a little miracle, and through it, we help them believe in miracles again. We restore their right to be children.

Nastya always says that in childhood, we believe in the tooth fairy. Our new generation, when they grow up, will remember that they believed in our main character—Morkunka, the “little carrot.” In Ukrainian, adding -unka makes a word cute or affectionate. So morkva (carrot) becomes morkunka, something like “carroty” or “little carrot,” a friendly helper figure.

Jacobsen: You work with the President’s Advisor for Children and Child Rehabilitation, and with international partners such as GIZ. What is the importance of these partnerships—both domestically with the advisor, and internationally with organizations like GIZ?

Svoboda: For global partnerships, we must share the same values. International partners seek social impact, large-scale results, and organizations whose missions align with their own. When our values match, the partnership becomes strong and effective.

At the local level, the focus is different. Local partnerships must respond to the specific needs of each region. Ukraine is not uniform in what children are experiencing. Frontline territories face intense trauma, constant danger, and a high level of PTSD symptoms in children. In contrast, in the western regions of Ukraine, the war is present but in different ways—there are air alerts and stress, but not the same immediate danger. Then there are central regions, which experience more frequent mass attacks.

Because every region has different levels of exposure, fear, and disruption, local partnerships allow us to respond appropriately to each territory’s needs. Global partnerships help us scale our work. Local partnerships help us tailor it so support reaches children in the right way, in the right place.

So, globally, the goal is a significant social impact aligned with donor priorities. Locally, the goal is precise, territory-specific impact that meets children where they are, in the conditions they live in.

We also have participants whose trauma is much more pronounced. In western Ukraine, for example, there are fewer air alerts and fewer direct attacks, so the needs are different. That is why, at the local level, we must focus on the specific requests of each region. At the global level, our partnerships focus on achieving large-scale social impact and working with organizations whose values align with ours. I hope I understood your question correctly.

Jacobsen: Now you are a national organization. For others who want to do similar work—helping children, supporting their mental health and potential—what are your recommendations? How should smaller organizations grow into national or global ones?

Svoboda: You are asking about recommendations for organizations that want to start small and grow to national impact.

It is essential to understand that local organizations address local needs, while national or global organizations address country-level needs. Small organizations should begin by understanding the specific requests of their own communities. National organizations must respond to broader systemic challenges.

For an organization to reach national impact, it needs strong project management. And the leadership must ask themselves the essential questions: For whom are we doing this? What exactly are we creating? How can we scale this impact?

To work at a national or global scale, you must build a system. Systemic influence comes from processes that can be repeated and from teams trained to reproduce those processes. And regarding your question about our system, it is essential not to try to do everything at once for everyone.

It is essential to focus on one problem or task and solve it in the best possible way. You cannot do everything at once or respond to every request. Choose one need, focus on it, and find the strongest solution. You work with that single request until you achieve real impact.

You must also find partners. Building partnerships is essential because each of us is strong, but together we are much stronger. Find good people and collaborate with them. And do not compete. Organizations working with children are colleagues, not rivals. Competition harms impact. Collaboration expands it.

Our partners are our colleagues, not competitors. And the final point—from our experience—you should always think like a startup. Even when you already have a large, structured organization, if you stop thinking like a startup, you lose the spirit of innovation.

So you must treat your organization as a startup. You may have excellent systems and processes, but without a startup mindset, you stop creating new ideas. Keep looking for innovations, improving solutions, and making things better again and again.

Learn constantly. Follow global developments. Observe what is happening in the world. Stay proactive. Believe in what you do. And be flexible.

Jacobsen: What other organizations do you recommend? If someone is interested in your work, who else should they learn about?

Svoboda: If you appreciate our work, you should also look at these organizations that help Ukrainian families. We work closely with Children of Heroes. We also partner with the foundation We Must Live, which supports widows of fallen soldiers and their children.

And we cooperate with the platform How Are You?, which assists different regions.

We have almost fifty partners. If you need it, we can prepare a list of the largest organizations we work with. It is quite long so that we can send it to you.

Jacobsen: That would be great. Thank you so much.

Svoboda: We will write the answers.

Jacobsen: I am going to meet a Ukrainian journalist.

Svoboda: It is enjoyable for us, and critical, when foreign media pay attention to our work. It helps us gain international support for Ukrainian children. Speaking with you is an absolute pleasure. Support from global journalists matters because this interest brings attention to our work, and as a result, 6,000 children have received support.

Jacobsen: Have a perfect night. I know it is late. Sleep well. I hope you do not have air-raid alarms tonight, even though that may be unlikely.

Svoboda: Thank you, Scott. If you need anything, feel free to contact us, and we will respond.

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