Island View Elementary students receive letters from Ukrainian students

ANACORTES, Wash. – After nearly four months of anticipation, the children in Heather Shainin’s Island View Elementary School class received letters Monday from their pen pals in Ukraine.

The Anacortes-based nonprofit Sunflower F.U.N.D., which passes along funding to Ukrainian partners, established the pen pal program between Ukrainian children and those in Shainin’s class.

Markéta Vorel, the organization’s founder, and its volunteer youth coordinator, Colton Hong, picked up letters written by Shainin’s students in February, and Vorel took them with her to Ukraine. The letters traveled thousands of miles and survived Russian bombing attacks to be delivered to Ukrainian children.

The children of Ukraine wrote back to their American counterparts, and Vorel and Hong returned to Shainin’s class Monday with the new correspondence in hand.

“So, in both my letters, they talked about the war, of course … but in the other one, she talks about how her dad is a soldier in the war and she wants the war to end so that her dad can come back home because she’s sad that her dad’s fighting in the war,” Island View student Felix Bassart said of his letters.

Vorel, who returned from Ukraine in late April, said working with children melts away the woes of the war, even if just for a moment.

“To me, this is an antidote to the way that I often feel when I’m in Ukraine, which, you know, can fill me with sadness and kind of a loss of hope, especially lately,” Vorel said.

Vorel gave a presentation to the Island View students on the situation in Ukraine and what life is like for children there.

The Island View students were filled with questions.

Vorel answered questions about drones, the experiences of Ukrainian children and bomb shelters.

“If we don’t want the war, why do we keep making weapons?” one student asked Vorel.

Though Shainin said teaching students about complex topics isn’t easy, she said she makes sure that all of what she teaches on the Ukraine-Russia war is factual and balanced.

Shainin said she attempts to provide both the Russian and Ukrainian perspectives, while safeguarding the emotional well-being of her students.

“I feel like that’s my job as an educator, (to) give my students as much as possible the facts of the situation, and then allow them to ask those questions and wonder about things,” Shainin said.

“I think when it comes to war and peace, it’s a message that I gave my students all the time, which is that we as individuals can be the ones to stop violence.”

Student Josie Jeter said she received a letter from an 8-year-old Ukrainian girl named Anastasia.

“She studies online because of the war, and she likes the color purple,” Jeter said.

Hong said the letter-writing campaign took him back to his own pen pal program when he was a younger student writing to a peer in Jordan.

“It was surprising how much common ground there was,” Hong said. “I was really into Pokemon cards, for example, back then, and I had a common bond over Pokemon cards.

“It’s just interesting to see how similar we were despite being so geographically different.”

Ultimately, Hong said he believes the pen pal program is important to the students because it helps foster empathy and understanding across cultural divides and opens the students’ minds to new perspectives.

“I think that’s a really important lesson today for all of us to learn is that even if we’re far away from somebody else, that we have different nationalities or backgrounds, etc., there’s just so much in common among us,” he said.

“Finding that inner humanity, especially at a young age, is really important for helping us to understand others.”