Support from BBF Global Relief helped Music in World Cultures host music camps in Ukraine that gave displaced children an outlet to understand their emotions. | Photo courtesy of Music in World Cultures

For the second year, BBF gave a grant to Music in World Cultures to help the organization run five summer camps at four locations across Ukraine. The funding gave hundreds of children the opportunity to sing, play instruments, and manage the trauma they’ve endured since the start of the war.  

Dr. Steve Benham, president of Music in World Cultures, has visited Ukraine four times since the war started, but during his most recent visit in July, he could tell that many Ukrainians have reached a new level of exhaustion.  

“The Ukrainians are strong. They’re surviving, but at the same point, you can just see a greater level of fatigue on their faces,” he says.  

While staying in Darnyts’kyi, a district southeast of Kyiv, air raid warnings went off every night, sometimes as many as three or four times a night.    

“It wears down on you emotionally and mentally, and there’s a numbness—and this is one of the things that’s hard,” Benham says. 

The music camps gave children an outlet for them to communicate freely and understand their emotions.  Benham observed a transformation in the children by the end of each camp. Those who started the week feeling aloof and timid soon became eager to sing and dance, regaining a sense of joy and uplifting their spirits. 

“We sincerely thank the entire team for the summer camp—for the care, patients and love you showed to our children—providing fun and music exploration to help during this time of war,” says Luba, the mother of one of the children who attended the camp.  

“The power of [the summer camps] is the ability for kids to feel their soul again, [for] the kids to feel that they’re human again,” Benham says.