A message from the Founder, Dr. Laura Vanderberg
Knowledge is power and it cannot be taken away. Fresh out of college, I lived in Ukraine for two years and served in the United States Peace Corps. I taught in a combined primary and secondary school in the central part of the country. Ukrainians taught me everything: their languages, cultures, customs, history, and how to survive and thrive in a foreign country when I was far from home. This knowledge and understanding of shared human values, those that cross cultural and linguistic boundaries, and are sometimes beneath the surface of explicit awareness, have been foundational in my career as an applied cognitive scientist. I dig to understand the genetic, neurological, cognitive, contextual, and developmental intersections that make us uniquely human. I am forever fascinated by our “neurocognitive diversity” (Vanderberg, 2019), that we have infinite potential for variation in our thinking and learning. And now I am applying this framework to support educators and children living with war in Ukraine. How do we support them to build self-efficacy and understand their own power? How do we learn from their experiences and reflections when we are across the world? How do we build on our learnings to enable the “ratchet effect” in human culture, so we know more and do better? Knowledge is internal and no violent invasion, no external government control can take it away. Work with educators and children is personal, intimate, and small; the impact is huge because each of these humans interacts across a lifetime with countless others. Please see our fellow teachers and children, Ukrainian and American, communicating in their own words. The lived experiences of our friends highlight the real lives impacted by the war in Ukraine. Please join our Global Community Corps to support the empowerment of Ukrainian children and educators.
Research on Ukrainian Children’s Displacement, Education, and Resilience
Together with Ukrainian colleagues, we are conducting educational research on Ukrainian children’s displacement and their resilience in action. Since the invasion began on February 24, 2022, Ukrainian children have experienced displacement from their homes, schools, and communities, both within Ukraine and also across the globe. Children have fled violence and experienced significant trauma. We are using our decades of research training in applied developmental science to ask critical questions about how children experience this displacement, what risks that they encounter, what factors might protect them, and how they cope with the violence and displacement. We are learning directly from the children, because they are the experts in their own experiences. We are supporting them to recognize their own self-efficacy in the midst of seemingly uncontrollable circumstances. Stay tuned for our findings as we collect and analyze data from Ukrainian children living throughout the world!