Press action medeor

Instead of maths or German, the pupils at Vorst Primary School had a special activity on their timetable these days. Classes 3b and 4b were given the opportunity to get creative and decorate boxes from the health aid organization action medeor with personal messages in bright colours. The boxes will now be filled with urgently needed medicines for Ukraine at the “world’s emergency pharmacy,” as action medeor is also known.

The children, who attend school just a few hundred metres from action medeor, are already familiar with the organization. According to teacher Katharina Mäcker, this is no coincidence: “It’s quite special that something as significant as action medeor is located here in Vorst. That’s why our classes from first to fourth grade regularly take part in events on site, to raise awareness of action medeor’s work.”

For the second time, action medeor visited Vorst Primary School and gave the pupils the opportunity to paint boxes for Ukraine. Teacher Mäcker considers it important that the children are made aware of the fate of people there - especially as children with Ukrainian roots attend school in Vorst and the surrounding area.

This is precisely where the work of Stephanie Wickerath, officer for regional education and public relations at action medeor, comes in. “With these painting activities, we want to encourage children to look beyond their own horizons,” Wickerath explains. “They should learn in a playful way why humanitarian aid such as that provided by action medeor is needed in the first place.”

The brown cardboard boxes that Wickerath and her team distributed to the 21 children in class 3b thus became a symbol of solidarity: children in Germany showing compassion for the people of Ukraine living in war, and brightening their everyday lives with colourful greetings from Tönisvorst. “If the boxes are a bit more colourful and not so brown anymore, it makes people in Ukraine happy,” Wickerath told the children. And they were more than willing, picking up their felt-tip pens and getting to work right away.

From smileys, hearts, rainbows and idyllic landscapes to medicines with faces or apples as a symbol of the “apple town” Tönisvorst, the children’s imagination knew no bounds. “How do you say ‘Best wishes’ in English?” one pupil asked. “And how do you say ‘Get well soon’?” another asked the action medeor staff, who promptly wrote the translations on the board. The heartfelt greetings from Tönisvorst, painted by the pupils of Vorst Primary School on a total of 15 boxes, will soon be sent to Ukraine. Before that, they will be filled with medicines and medical supplies at the warehouse of the “world’s emergency pharmacy” in Tönisvorst.