The transformation of the Nova Hreblia Gymnasium’s bomb shelter is over!

B50 volunteers have completed the transformation of the children’s bomb shelter in Nova Hreblia! It was a lot of work, but we did it! So now the schoolchildren have a cool, bright space where they will feel safe during air raids, which have become much more frequent recently.

Nova Hreblia is located 11 km from Borodianka and in the spring of 2022, it fully experienced the “beauty” of the rashist occupation. At that time, the russians set up their base in the gymnasium, which had 104 students before the invasion. They shot through all the windows and destroyed a lot of furniture.

The locals call this gymnasium the “heart of the village”, so reopening it is very important for restoring peaceful life in the community. Therefore, the school management asked the B50 community to turn the gloomy storage facility into a full-fledged part of the educational space. And we gladly responded. The Ukrainian office of TakeOff also responded and financed the purchase of materials for the transformation of the shelter.

At this facility, the B50 volunteers were tasked with repairing 3 small rooms for kindergarteners and 1 large room for primary school students. They had to refine the lighting system, plaster the walls, replace the rotten floor in the large room, and then paint and decorate all 4 rooms with drawings. You can see what the Nova Hrebelia Gymnasium shelter looked like before the work began below.

The first to work at the location were B50 volunteers from the Reconstruction project. They renovated all 4 rooms:

• cleaned, coated and primed the walls and ceiling;
• improved the lighting system;
• replaced the old floor in the large room.

The transformation of the shelter was featured in an ICTV story.

After that, the volunteers from the Shelters project took over and painted unique designs in all the rooms. The overall concept of the shelter’s decoration is travel. In the small rooms, a fairy tale about travel came to life on the walls, and interesting tourist locations in Ukraine and around the world appeared on the walls of the large room.

Polina Koruts, the project’s artwork coordinator, shares her impressions of the completion of the Nova Hrebelia Gymnasium shelter:

I am always incredibly happy when I see our finished work! It’s so cool))) Colourful, bright, fun))) Each shelter is special, not like the others, so it’s like a challenge for me and my assistants.

We already know that the children are delighted with the drawings (some have even started copying them))) and they really like that the shelter is now so beautiful)))

We are grateful to our tireless creative volunteers and caring partners for their participation in the project! See how the Nova Hrebelia Gymnasium shelter has been transformed thanks to them in the photo below (drag the arrow slider to view).