Olena Zelenska Foundation, together with the Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry of Digital Transformation, launched the Device Coalition

The Coalition has already collected over 50,000 devices for children's education from international partners.

Education is the basis for the future of our children. The Foundation, together with its partners, aims to improve the quality of education by providing Ukrainian children and teachers with gadgets for remote learning.

To date, Olena Zelenska Foundation, with the support of foreign partners, has collected and distributed tens of thousands of laptops and tablets to schoolchildren and teachers. However, in order to meet the entire demand, it was necessary to unite more initiatives in this direction.

Therefore, the Foundation, together with the Ministries of Education and Digital Transformation of Ukraine launched the Device Coalition. It was presented on January 23 in London as part of the Bett UK 2024 education conference.

"The safety of children is our top priority. But beyond safety, we want to give them a future, opportunities and prospects. So while our defenders are fighting at the frontline, among other things, for children to be able to go to school freely, we must at least provide the possibility of distance education, despite the war. Probably, no one else in the world has done this on such a scale for an entire country. To date, my foundation, with the support of foreign partners, has collected and distributed about 50,000 laptops and tablets to schoolchildren and teachers. But to meet the need, more initiatives need to be combined," said First Lady Olena Zelenska.

The goal of the Device Coalition is to ensure access to education in communities most affected by war. Tablets and laptops will be provided primarily to vulnerable children in regions where education is predominantly online.

"Due to the full-scale war, the education sector is facing many challenges. One of them is to provide quality online education to children who cannot study offline. Currently, this number exceeds 1.9 million children. More than 330,000 of them don't even have access to distance learning due to the lack of equipment – a laptop, tablet or smartphone. That's why we're creating the Device Coalition, to provide schoolchildren and teachers with the devices they need to get back into the educational process. The development of education is the basis for Ukraine's economic breakthrough and the preservation of human capital," said Mykhailo Fedorov, Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine.

Providing gadgets is an opportunity for these children to not only continue to gain knowledge and skills, but also to socialize, learn new information, and communicate with their peers.

"The Coalition's goal this year is to meet the critical need for devices for children and teachers in 10 regions where distance learning is currently prevalent. The critical need for laptops is now over 96,000 for children and over 29,000 for teachers. Importantly, the devices can also be used to help overcome learning loss, prepare for exams, and provide psychological support. Returning children to the educational process and restoring access to extracurricular activities is a key factor in developing the potential of our children," explained Oksen Lisovyi, Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine.

To ensure that these devices are effectively integrated into the educational process, work is underway to create a full-fledged digital education ecosystem. It will operate and evolve with the support of stakeholders, development partners and educators.

To date, the Coalition has already achieved its first result - more than 50,000 gadgets for Ukrainian schoolchildren and teachers will be provided by UNICEF, Education Cannot Wait, the Ministry of Economy and Innovation of the Republic of Lithuania, and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

The first batch of devices from our partner UNICEF will be distributed to the Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.