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Daily air strikes and bombings in Eastern Ukraine mean that physical education in schools is dangerous. Many school buildings have been bombed and destroyed. Pupils and teachers either work from home or bomb shelters. In other words, they are in great need of IT equipment, especially laptops.
Following an initiative by staff at the Faculty of Medicine, UiO is now making arrangements enabling all units to donate work PCs and other IT equipment to schools in Ukraine.
Read more about how you can donate (for UiO staff)
Two committed employees
It was last November that advisor Elisabeth Kolflaath Semprini and IT manager Tor Henry Wold at the Faculty of Medicine decided to start collecting PCs and other IT equipment for the Ukrainian school sector.
Semprini has been involved in several forms of donation and aid work towards Ukraine since the Russian invasion in 2022.
– Due to close cooperation with the Ukrainian embassy in Norway, I received a direct inquiry about the possibility of helping Ukraine's primary school sector with IT equipment for use in remote learning, she says.
In collaboration with the Ukrainian embassy
Semprini quickly came up with the idea of involving colleagues and management at the Faculty of Medicine. She talked to Wold, and then they got thumbs up from both the faculty dean and Rector Svein St?len.
– No one can do everything, but everyone can do something. This also applies to UiO as an institution. As such, it was not difficult to say yes when Elisabeth and Tor Henry asked for help to involve the entire university, he says.
The fundraising work takes place in collaboration with the Ukrainian Embassy in Norway, the Ukrainian Association in Norway (Norwegian and Ukrainian) and the voluntary organization PUTE (Norwegian only). The recipient in Ukraine is the Ukrainian Ministry of Education and other players in the school sector.