“Guardians of Safety” is a guide made for children to learn about at-home safety during wartime and blackouts. The assimilation of knowledge through useful information, interesting tasks and games from the interactive adventure book contributes to developing the safety culture of each child—a crucial part of building the conscious society of tomorrow.
As part of a joint information campaign with the State Emergency Service (SES) of Ukraine the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Ukraine and the Cultural Platform of Zakarpattya NGO released “Guardians of Safety” in the winter of 2023. The aim of the project is to explain how to handle common fire-hazardous objects and teach the children to identify situations when the safety rules are violated.
The team of the Cultural Platform Zakarpattya NGO worked on the development of the adventure book: came up with the concept, exercises, texts, and illustrations and prepared the material for printing. The material of the brochure was created together with psychologist Svitlana Roiz, so it fully takes into account the specifics of how children perceive information and is written in a language that is understandable and interesting for them.
Since children learn all the material through playing, the concept of “Guardians of Safety” is based on edutainment principles. It integrates the educational process into an entertaining format that is easier for children to perceive. When flipping through the pages of the book, children receive svitlomissii (light missions) that must be completed. They learn how to properly use such items as a gas burner, generator, stove, and candles, and set up a safe home to become real guardians of safety. Tasks can be completed both at home and during classes at school.
Having passed all the missions of the brochure, the child will become a young fire safety expert and will even be able to conduct their own little home inspection. You can download the “Guardians of Safety” adventure book here.
The Cultural Platform team, together with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), experts of the State Emergency Service (SES) and the educators of Ukraine, is building an ecosystem of “safety culture” as a youth worldview trend. Such an ecosystem integrates several state programs in the field of security, education and horizontal democratic society development supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Ukraine during the full-scale invasion. Here you can read about another key component of this ecosystem—an online course for teachers, SES personnel and police officers about educating children on mine safety, created by UNICEF, and the Cultural Platform of Zakarpattya NGO.
Tetyana Koliadych