Key Takeaways

From June 9 to 12, the team of the NGO “Point of Equilibrium” held a lessons learned session within the project “Improving the level of safe education for children and adolescents affected by war in Sumy, Kharkiv and Donetsk regions of Ukraine”.

The event brought together specialists from all areas of the project – coordinators, psychologists, specialists in child protection, monitoring and evaluation, communications, logistics, procurement and finance. For three days, the team worked on a comprehensive analysis of the implemented activities, an assessment of the achieved results and the identification of practical conclusions for further improvement of the program activities.

Particular attention was paid to the analysis of the main components of the project:

• provision of psychosocial support through the activities of multidisciplinary mobile teams;
• information campaigns on mental health and child protection;
• mapping of services and referral mechanisms;
• training of child protection professionals, young psychologists, safe educational spaces specialists and Mental Trek facilitators;
• distribution of psychosocial and educational kits;
• monitoring and evaluation systems results;
• communication, security, financial and procurement processes.

The session participants worked with SWOT analysis tools, practical cases and interactive team analysis methods. This approach allowed not only to assess achievements and challenges, but also to understand more deeply the relationship between individual project components and their contribution to achieving a common goal.
A separate result of the meeting was the formation of recommendations for future programs and strengthening internal coordination between teams. The discussions confirmed that effective support for children and families in communities is possible thanks to a comprehensive approach, in which each area of ​​work is an important part of a single assistance system.

The final day was dedicated to reflection, assessment of personal contribution and care for the team. After all, sustainable results of humanitarian programs are impossible without professional development, mutual support and preservation of the internal resource of specialists who work daily with people affected by war.
The lessons learned session became a space for open dialogue, professional reflection on experience, and development of solutions that will help make future interventions even more effective, timely, and focused on the needs of children and families.