Music Therapy for Children in Ukraine

The Project:

The short film and the photographs were taken by anonymous members of the team working with the children in Ukraine only a few days ago.

Emeritus Professor of Music Nigel Osborne is one of the world's experts in the use of music to tackle trauma as a result of war and conflict. We, and many others, have worked with Nigel for over 20 years in the Western Balkans, UK and India using music to help children deal with anxiety, stress, their disabilities and trauma. Nigel has projects around the world including in Yemen, Lebanon and India as well as his home base of Scotland.

Comments from one student who is on the training course:

Sofia Kopach, a student studying in the psychology program: "The course seemed very serious to me and I was scared. But actually the course is very interesting and clear. Thanks to him, I saw that it was difficult for me to work with children in the shelter. In a global sense, it is sad to see the conditions in which children live. In order for significant changes to take place, a lot of work needs to be done." 20 December 2022

The Need:

We need to fund 4 trips in the next two months for Nigel to travel to Ukraine to provide music therapy and training. It costs approx £400 to get there (flight, an overnight and train, for internal travel around Ukraine, approx cost £100, accommodation per trip around £300 and food, £150. So for each visit that Nigel takes it costs £950.  Adding to this the costs of the trainees accompanying him on each of these visits, we aim to raise £5000 in total. 

This is all part of the seed funding to establish this Music Therapy programme. Last month we raised £2200 from a number of friends and colleagues which was needed urgently to start the training. Huge thanks for their generosity and quick response.

Training the Team:

Nigel is now in Ukraine teaching students at postgraduate level in 4 universities in Lviv and Kharkiv, training a team of psychologists, medical students, musicians and others to use music to support traumatised children across Ukraine.

Discussions are in an advanced stage to expand teaching to universities in Kropyvnytsky, Kyiv and Odessa.

The Schedule:

The regular schedule consists of a monthly week-long trip to Ukraine to teach in person and lead workshops with children alongside trainees, followed by weekly online lectures.

The practical workshops with children are taking place in locations across the country, supervised by Nigel and his team of local and international colleagues. 

Current locations are:

• State Orphanage, Lviv for Relocated Children from Luhansk, Eastern Ukraine (3 groups with 45 newly orphaned children, age 4-15)
• State Central Hospital, Kharkiv
• Children's ward for long term kidney diseases
• Children's ward for blood cancers 

Many more locations are expected be added as the student training part of the programme progresses in the months ahead.

Other Funding and the long term:

We are working with a Ukrainian NGO, a cultural and arts organisation, who are building a two year programme of music and the creative arts based on Nigel's work  to help the country recover, in particular the children.  Applications are being sent to large international funders and philanthropists. Any ideas or contacts to help them please contact [email protected] asap.

Extracts from Nigel's first diary from Ukraine:

"Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are devoted to the children’s shelters where I both supervise and lead groups of students and trainees. The children have arrived in these resident shelters from places like Mariupol and Zaporizhia. They are a mixture of war orphans and those separated from their parents for a variety of reasons. The shelters are well run, but the children bring with them all the problems that war brings to young minds and bodies - hyperactivity alternating with sluggishness, lack of concentration and reluctance to engage emotionally.

Our youngest group is (very sadly) orphaned children of 3 to 6 years old. There are nine of them. In the last session we sang two children’s songs - we don’t “teach” children of this age songs, they learn by singing along - in this case Kotiku Bilenkiy (white cat) and Dva Pivnyky (two roosters). I had brought a white, tactile, toy cat. We passed it around the children to touch the fur and act out the cat running around the Chata (hut). My objectives here were sensory and sensory-motor stimulation; then we moved on to clapping a simple rhythm - rhythm helps mend the experience of time for children who have had it broken. We noticed the some children can clap well in time, others less well and a few not at all. We noted these as important things to be worked on. We also introduced emotional stimulation, using the sounds of cats to express ourselves in different ways. Then we repeated the exercises with the song about the roosters. The culmination of the session had been telling the Ukrainian folk tale of how a cat and a rooster built a hut to live in. We built the hut from chairs, cushions and blankets, and the children enjoyed being inside. Our objectives were to stimulate imagination and to create an atmosphere of family and safety. This time we begin by building the hut." November 2022

"Learning in wartime is difficult because we have so many challenges that can hinder the process. But the teaching team has good support from the students, we unite and jointly solve any difficulties, work hard, study and believe that our knowledge and skills bring victory closer and give us all confidence and unity, and therefore, we will be ready to share with the world with our history and experience. the material was worked on by: Anastasia Shiroka, associate professor of the Department of Psychology and Psychotherapy of UCU, Lviv, Ukraine.