The charity-funded app offers 5 titles to help kids cope with trauma.
Rotterdam:
When Ruslan Mykhalchenko leaves his family in the Netherlands to return to Ukraine next week, the one thing he will miss most is reading a bedtime story to his 5-year-old daughter, Olivia.
It is a harsh reality for Mykhalchenko and the countless Ukrainian fathers who have been separated from their families by the war with Russia, now entering their ninth month.
Martial law in Ukraine prohibits men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country. Mykhalchenko, who works with an NGO in Ukraine, managed to snatch some time this week while collecting aid distribution with his refugee family in the Netherlands.
Now, an audiobook app, “Better Time Stories,” makes it possible for Olivia to listen to her father’s voice while sleeping through the night, even when they’re apart.
The app, which is funded by a charity, features five titles selected to help children process the trauma of war and is aimed at children ages 3 to 7.
Mykhalchenko, 41, records himself reading Olivia’s new favorite book, “101 Lighthouses,” about a father who counts lighthouses with his son to help him sleep.
“This book is very special to me, because (Olivia) is far away from me, my heart,” Ruslan said.
Interactive books come with a QR code, which when scanned or tapped opens an app with an audiobook version. The app also allows families to send a link so that fathers can record their audio version, which then appears in the app.
Fathers can view picture books online and record their audio page by page. They can re-record sections if unwanted noises such as air-raid alarms interfere with their reading.
The story app was originally created by Andrey Shmihelsky, an Amsterdam-based social tech entrepreneur from Ukraine. Schmihelski, who has lived in the Netherlands since 2014, wanted to help refugee families stay connected with men living in Ukraine.
“I wanted books that would help mother and child work together and get through this emotional crisis[of]what separation is basically like,” he told Reuters.
According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, 90 percent of the more than 7 million refugees from Ukraine are women and children. In a recent UNHCR survey, more than three-quarters of all refugees in question said they had experienced family separation.
Packages containing five bilingual books in Ukrainian and Dutch, or Ukrainian and German can be requested by refugee families from the Better Time Stories website.
Using donations received since the end of September, the Netherlands has accepted nearly 1,000 orders, of which 200 have already been delivered. Shipments for the German language version haven’t started yet, Schmihelski said.
The mailed package, which includes all five books that come with the app, costs 15 euros.
Yulia Bilan, a mother of two sons, is eight months pregnant and has been living as a single parent in The Hague since the war broke out. Her husband lives in Buka near Kyiv.
Her boys Ilja, 10, and Pasha, 11, are too old for picture books but were happy to have their first Ukrainian books in months, which they are reading to their unborn sister.
Bilan said the books are helping his family process difficult feelings, as his son Pasha showed visitors his favorite, a book called “The Day War Comes to Rondo.”
Mykhalchenko said he would love the taste of reading to Olivia until he moved back to Ukraine next week, leaving behind his wife, 37-year-old Alla. He lives in Mykolaiv, a town near the Black Sea that is the target of frequent Russian missile attacks.
Alla said that the audiobooks recorded by her husband have helped her feel less lonely.
“Before we fall asleep we listen to his voice and fall asleep more securely, more calmly,” she said.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)