In late May, Ukraine’s largest printing facility, Faktor Druk, was severely damaged by a missile attack on Kharkiv. It is expected to take six to eight months for the factory to be repaired.
The day after the attack, the US made it “an urgent priority” to address this crisis and ensure that educational materials are available for children.
“We really focused on hardcover textbooks for first and second graders in Ukraine as an area where they identified the most urgent need, and working with them to identify facilities where these materials can be prepared and printed,” said a US official.
More than a million textbooks will be manufactured at other Ukrainian printing houses in time for the start of the school year in September 2024, at a cost of $8 million. The texts will be distributed to approximately 12,700 schools throughout Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova, called the funding for printing the textbooks “extremely timely and very much valued by the people of Ukraine…It is especially important that funding will be provided to Ukrainian printing houses. It is another investment in our future.”
“[This] is helping to ensure that Ukraine is able to educate its students and its children,” a senior US official said.
In addition to this textbook initiative, over the past year we have devoted substantial resources to translating educational materials from Russian to Ukrainian.
We are committed to the continued education and engagement of Ukrainian youth, the leaders of tomorrow.
