Orlando BloomGoodwill Ambassador ofUNICEFit is at Kyiv where he met the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The actor is the “first trip since 2016” to the country, the Hollywood star visited a center for the little ones: “The children in Ukraine they need their childhood back,” said Bloom, who posted a video on social media.
Bloom spent some time at the Unicef-supported Spilno children’s center in Kiev. It was Bloom’s second visit to the country since 2016, when he traveled to eastern Ukraine and visited Sviatohirsk, Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Mariupol. “When I was there I never expected the war to escalate like this,” the actor wrote on Instagram, “but today I was lucky enough to hear the laughter of children at a Unicef supported center, a safe, warm place for children to play, learn and receive psychosocial support”.
The center of Spilno in Ukraine The Spilno Project operates over 180 centers across Ukraine, providing support to internally displaced children and families, low-income families, families with children with disabilities, and people affected by domestic violence, among other vulnerable groups. One of the centres’ goals is to give children a sense of normalcy so they can play, learn and express themselves creatively: “It was built underground in the subway to keep children safe. For a few hours a day, parents can give them a sense of normality,” Bloom continued, noting the presence of arts and crafts materials at the center, “which allow children to express themselves creatively, away from the pressures of war “.
Zelenskyy’s words “I met with Unicef Goodwill Ambassador Orlando Bloom and the team at Unicef, an organization that works to provide humanitarian aid and protect children… We have the issue of rebuilding our country and ours school infrastructure discussed. I appreciate this help. We agreed that our teams need to work on several issues,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as reported by Ukrinform. These issues include the repatriation of Ukrainian children deported to Russia, the establishment of nuclear shelters in Russia, according to the president Educational institutions and technical support for distance learning in areas where offline learning is not possible due to the war.