After A War
A Social Story on the Ukraine-Russian War
By Dr. Shu-Chen Jenny Yen
What is a war, and what does it mean? As the conflict in Ukraine continues, many children are probably wondering about this question. This is one of the most difficult conversations for parents and educators to address. It’s normal not to know how to answer this question in a way that children can understand.
A Message to Refugee Children
Dr. Shu-Chen Jenny Yen created a social story entitled After a War to explain the war between Russia and Ukraine to children around the world including the Ukrainian refugee children, with the goal of instilling hope in the refugee children’s minds. Dr. Yen would like to send a message to the refugee children to encourage them to remain strong and remain hopeful. She wants these children to know that there are many people throughout the world who support them. In the meantime, Dr. Yen would like to foster empathy among families throughout the world for the people of Ukraine.
In this project, Dr. Yen also empowers the young generation to share their thoughts about the war through illustration. Austen Liu (5 years old) used color pencils and markers to illustrate this story every day after preschool for two weeks. Carina Wu (13 years old) used Procreate on her iPad and spent more than 35 hours to complete the drawings, and Sunny Sun (16 years old) from China used Canva to convey her thoughts about the war. Also, Claire Wu (16 years old) spent many hours translating the story into Chinese and disseminated the story on social media in both the US and China.
Now Available in Croatian and Ukrainian
The exciting news is that the story was also translated into Croatian and Ukrainian. The Croatian version was translated by Enea Vorkapić (17 years old) and Dr. Sanja Tatalović Vorkapić from the University of Rijeka, Croatia. The Ukrainian version is translated by Drs. Olesya Saban and Oksana Taran from Lviv Polytechnic National University, Ukraine. Dr. Saban’s son, Orest Saban, not only helped out with the translation but also promoted the story on social media. They are hiding in different places and trying to survive every day. Dr. Yen keeps close contact with Dr. Saban and is working on sending hard copies of the social story to Ukraine.
You can download all language versions of After a War and explore other stories for children at the Social Story Center website.
