Gabriella Jóźwiak - Freelance Journalist

In this episode I report about how a listener got in touch with me asking how she could help children in Ukraine, and together we fundraised to buy a bus. Listen here . 

In this episode I interview Ukrainian teenagers who have fled to Warsaw since Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine. We discussed studying abroad and adapting into Polish society more than two years since the start of the war. I also report generally on how Ukrainian refugees are coping in Poland. This piece marked World Refugee Day 2024. Listen here . 

If he had finished his education, Aregawy Tekle Birham, 23, believes he never would have left Tigray. Sitting on a stone step outside his old primary school in the mountainside village of Gendefru, Northern Ethiopia, Aregawy regretfully recounts his decision to migrate. “I couldn’t get a job here because I only studied to grade 4,” he says, tugging dry stalks of grass from the ground and snapping them. “This school didn’t teach any further, and it was too expensive to travel to another. I thought I would find work in Saudi Arabia. But when I reached the border, they imprisoned me for three years.” The only unusual part of Aregawy’s story is that he came home... Read the full story on The Telegraph .

  Amid widespread concern that Ukraine’s online learners’ educational progress and personal development is at risk, the government and education organizations are working to improve online learning platforms and incentivize in person school attendance. At least 1.5 million Ukrainian children have not entered a classroom since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to government figures . This represents just over a third of the school-aged population. For many reasons, including schools being bombed or lacking shelters, online learning is the only safe option. The rest of Ukraine’s pupils study in person or a blend of on- and offline. Yet, online learning appears to be having negative repercussions on the country’s educational attainment... Read the full story on Devex.com . 

Every time Nixon Boumba steps out of his house in Port-au-Prince, Haiti , he anticipates being shot. “I know so many people, so many people who died or went to hospital because they got hit by a balle perdue [stray bullet],” he told i. The social justice activist says the risk of being accidentally hit in crossfire or kidnapped by gangs that now control 80 per cent of the city means public spaces, supermarkets, banks, bars or restaurants – everywhere outside home – is dangerous. “We don’t know at any moment what could happen,” he said... Read the full story on iNews .

Maryna Mykolayivna’s eyes are hot with tears. She stabs the air angrily with pointed fingers as she describes how on 24 February 2022, the day Russia invaded Ukraine, her employer at an orphanage in the eastern city of Lusychansk told her to immediately evacuate five children to another institution in Lviv – more than one thousand kilometres away. “I didn’t want to go,” says the assistant educator. “I have two daughters and three grandchildren.” Maryna has been in the western city of Lviv, just 70 kilometres from the Polish border, for nearly eight months now. “I miss my home. I’m living in the orphanage 24 hours a day. I can’t rent my own place – I’m paid, but not enough. You couldn’t understand what I’m going through unless you’d gone through it yourself. I’m on the brink of leaving.” As she speaks, the shrieking of children in the room intensifies. The group of 11 children aged three to eight years at the Lviv Children’s Shelter are stressed themselves. The state placed these childr...

The scene is the same as the start of any sunny June nursery day. Parents drop off their children at the gate. Nursery workers greet them warmly, help them remove their backpacks, check their sunhats are on. And off the children run to play on the trampoline or climbing frame, with a cheerful shriek. But a closer look reveals something different: a pile of sandbags by the kindergarten’s wall. The children’s bags kept nearby in case an air-raid siren goes off. Parents lingering a little longer, perhaps, as they say goodbye. This is wartime early education in Ukraine. And these children, who can still go to nursery, are the lucky ones... Read the full cover story in this month's issue of Nursery World, or on NurseryWorld.co.uk .  This article was written as part of my work for the 2022 Early Childhood Global Reporting Fellowship at the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma at the Columbia Journalism School.

Mikola Zdruk, 53, leans back wearily on the bench outside the shelter for displaced people in a suburb of the city of Lviv, western Ukraine. A bed in a shared room in the basement of a block of flats has been his home for the past four weeks. He fled from the Zaporizhzhia region, eastern Ukraine after Russian forces invaded the country on Feb. 24.  “I saw explosions and missiles,” he said weakly, between deep, gravelly coughs. “When I arrived in Lviv on an evacuation train, I was sent for an X-ray. The doctors said I had tuberculosis.”  Read the full story on Devex.com .