Amazon has worked in countries across Europe to donate school supplies to help young Ukrainian refugees prepare for the new school year. Volunteers have also helped set up multimedia centers, complete with Amazon devices, to ensure the children have access language and learning support.
“Over 200,000 Ukrainian children have entered the Polish education system since the beginning of the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. Thanks to Amazon, we can distribute aid to our points of temporary stay across Poland, including tens of thousands of school kits,” said Katarzyna Mikołajczyk, director of Red Cross Poland. “Thanks to this campaign, we can again help Polish and Ukrainian children in need—and make them feel at home. It is crucial for us that everyone feels good together at school.“
In August, Amazon employees helped the Polish Red Cross pack over half a million products into 32,000 school backpacks. These supplies will be delivered to 16 Red Cross warehouses and then distributed to children in schools across Poland. In Luxembourg, Amazon volunteers packed more than 2,000 school backpacks for refugee children that will be delivered to the Red Cross Luxembourg. And in Germany, Amazon invested more than €1.7 million ($1.69 million) in product and cash donations, along with volunteer activities, to support refugee families from Ukraine with their immediate and educational needs.
In addition to the school supplies, Amazon is expanding its Kindloteka program—which delivers educational activities in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)—to 96 additional locations with the goal of reaching 10,000 refugee children. In Poland, Amazon employees have created multimedia corners in local schools, libraries, and educational centers. The corners are equipped with Kindle and Echo devices, along with tools and books that support programming and robotic workshops, music making, and science experiments.
Amazon will also donate more than 25,000 devices to provide young Ukrainian refugees with easy access to Ukrainian literature, language support, and other learning applications in local languages. These devices, worth more than $2.4 million, will be distributed to schools, charities, and other institutions working with Ukrainian refugees. Devices will also be given directly to refugee families that have been relocated in Europe.
The work augments Amazon’s ongoing educational efforts to help Ukrainian students continue learning. Other efforts include the expansion of AWS Educate, a free online and self-paced learning program, so content is available in the Ukrainian language. AWS is also working with two Polish universities—Warsaw School of Computer Science and WSB University in Dabrowa Gornicza—to make AWS Academy Cloud Foundations training available to Ukrainian refugees free of charge. The three-month course provides a detailed overview of cloud concepts to equip students with valuable new skills that are in demand by employers.
