Teaching children what not to touch

Clearance takes decades. Risk education takes an afternoon and saves lives in the meantime, which is why it runs in parallel with everything else.

Why children are at particular risk

Because they go where adults do not: into fields, ditches, ruins, riverbanks and woods. Because an unfamiliar metal object is interesting. And because some munitions are small, brightly coloured and shaped in ways that do not read as dangerous to an eight-year-old.

Adolescent boys are the highest-risk group in almost every mine-affected country, and Ukraine is not an exception.

What effective teaching looks like

Not a lecture. Recognition training with images of the actual items found locally, a simple and memorable rule — do not approach, do not touch, mark the place in your memory, tell an adult — and repetition, because a single session does not hold.

It is delivered in schools, in community centres, through youth clubs and, importantly, through parents, because a child's behaviour follows what the household treats as serious.

What partners funded

Materials, trainers, and integration of the teaching into the school curriculum so that it happens every year rather than once.

The measure

Casualty figures among children, tracked by region. It is a grim metric and it is the only one that tells you whether the teaching is working.