Books, Hope, and a Red Phone Box! Underground BnB’s mission in Ukraine is to bring books and hope into Ukrainian school bomb shelters. In this blog, Eugene from Svitlo School shares how red phone box bookshelves are helping students reconnect with learning, even in the darkest times.
This initiative is one of the inspiring projects submitted to the Global Social Leaders Global Goals Competition 2024-25, showcasing youth-led action for a better world.
When you know the problem, it’s a half of the solution, your main challenge though is to take the first step.
Project Summary
We are UndergroundBnB (shortened to “Books in Bomb Shelters”), a volunteer and non-profit project focused on supporting Ukrainian schools affected by the war. Because of the full-scale invasion that’s happening in Ukraine right now, many students have lost their motivation to learn and study. Moreover, many students from schools that were destroyed or damaged have had to continue their studies in other schools, studying in shifts or remotely, which has eroded the quality of education. As a result, the full-scale war has madeaccess to education worse and existing education inequalities deeper. It has negatively affected the quality of the education process and the students’ progress, and has impacted the mental and emotional state of students and teachers.
The main goal of our campaign is to motivate Ukrainians to study and develop themselves despite the depressive conditions around them. We want to achieve this by installing themed bookshelves in bomb shelters of different schools, turning them into spaces where students can feel safe, inspired, and engaged through access to English (both fiction and classic) books.
We chose this project because Ukraine is our homeland and we are not indifferent to its fate and future. As we ourselves are students too, we already understand the idea of how difficult, challenging and tough it is to study in such a tense atmosphere. That’s why we’re trying our best to inspire and motivate Ukrainian students in their studies by giving them an extra opportunity to read in English.
Underground BnB is more than just about books! It is about bringing light and education into places marked by conflict. With each bookshelf installed, we will help to create moments of hope and peace for children who deserve both.
At the moment, we are still working on a project. We are gathering funds for constructing and installing themed bookshelves in the shape of a traditional red British telephone box as a symbol of connection to a world where there is no war, where there is knowledge, dreams and possibilities. A phone box is a place from which you can reach someone who is far away. Books are not just words, they are a bridge between the present and the future, between fear and hope. That’s why our bookshelf looks like a phone box – it gives you the opportunity to “call” to a world where there are always answers and where you can find support even in the most difficult times. It should be noted that, in accordance with our plan, all books provided to the schools are fully available and absolutely free to read and use while staying in a bomb shelter during air raids.
For the assistance and support provided in the ideas and initiatives of our project, with great gratitude and admiration, we would like to thank our school, our first, and currently main, partner – “Svitlo Education”.
The Journey
Through participating in the GSL Global Goals Competition, we’ve developed a number of different and extremely useful skills in teamwork (such as support and assistance when there is a need to take the task over), project planning and efficiency. We began our journey by organising weekly planning meetings to coordinate tasks and track progress. After the first stage of planning was done (identification of problems that we wanted to solve, building our philosophy and brand), we began the search for schools in need. We created a questionnaire for children learning English as an extracurricular activity and gathered enough answers to identify the main regions we were going to support – Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. According to the results of the research we did, 90% of the respondents were looking forward to the possibility of having books in their bomb shelters, but only 1/4 of them believed that the idea might have been in demand among other schoolmates.
Media and content development is another thing we’ve learned participating in this competition. To build awareness and connect with supporters we created an Instagram page, where anyone interested can get acquainted with us and our goals. We made a decision that the project should be promoted on different internet platforms, for each of which a specific type of content would be found. For example, Tik Tok is quite famous for its entertaining and friendly content, and we are planning to release videos related to books, such as our favourite books, and what people can learn from them. Also, recently in Telegram, a very famous platform in Ukraine, we’ve launched a channel where we will publish information about the books we sell to raise money for the bookshelves. Not only is it interesting, but most importantly, it helps our team to find supportive people.
Fundraising, formal communication and creating international partnerships are things that we’ve learned by setting up our personal fundraising account on JustGiving.com and collaborating with Svilto Education to fundraise via a Ukrainian bank. This allows us to collect donations from both Ukrainian and foreign individuals who want to take part in our project. Our next step was to send many emails to publishing houses, potential volunteers, authors and writers, and different schools in England and Scotland, kindly requesting any donations in the form of books, financial support, or help with spreading the word about our project.
The search for potential partners and sponsors has yielded results and we are very happy to be working together with another charity initiative (also developed through GSL), “Svitlo Reads”, which kindly helps us sell books to raise funds for the project; their team also helps advertise and promote our ideas. Other useful skills we’ve gained are critical thinking, situation analysis and creative problem-solving. Also we’ve learned that we are capable of taking initiative and staying committed to a cause, even when progress feels slow or uncertain.
As a result of the work carried out, we successfully achieved the first visible results: we received a book package (121 books) from our school and some extra materials (e.g. different merchandise, such as t-shirts etc.). These materials are going to be used to organise a small fundraising effort that aims to raise additional money to support the construction and installation of the bookshelves, as our biggest challenge has been finding enough funding to bring our idea to life. Finding people to support our project is another thing we are struggling with at the moment. However, slowly but surely we are overcoming these difficulties by improving our social media strategy, continuing our outreach efforts, and finding new ways to engage and inspire our audience to support us. Right now our planned next steps are promoting a raffle, ordering the first bookshelf, then delivering and installing it in the selected school.
The Next Chapter
Considering the priceless experience and skills we’ve gained while working on our project for GSL Global Goals Competition, we would definitely recommend other young leaders our age to start and develop similar projects in their communities or countries.
It’s not only about gaining useful and unique experiences that help you to evaluate and understand the world’s issues and needs, but also about self-development and building a strong reputation in your community. Taking part in such campaigns gives you an opportunity to make a difference in the world, and to encourage and inspire individuals around you. Moreover, any volunteering activity helps you to form your own view and opinion on different world situations and conflicts happening around us.
In short, it’s an unforgettable experience that is worth all the effort!
