Civilizations have gone underground for thousands of years in order to avoid invading armies or to combat enemies from a position of advantage. An incredible example of ancient underground cities exists in the Cappadocia region of Turkey, where underground cities such as Derinkuyu stretch many stories below ground and include all the amenities one would find in a town above ground such as barns, cellars, wineries, churches, boileries, and even a school. MIS 9th-grader Anastasiia Shurma knows what it’s like to go to school underground. Having spent much of the last school year in a bomb shelter under an international school in Ukraine, Anastasiia remembers that “the conditions were really bad. Every day, you would hear explosions and bombs from school, and we’d have to go down to the shelters. The air was dense in there, and it was really uncomfortable. I barely survived that year in Ukraine. When I came back here, I had the motivation to do something big.”
Through MIS's Service as Action curriculum component, Anastasiia saw her opportunity to do just that! All 9th-graders are required to participate in a certain number of hours of impactful social service. Anastasiia explains that “Service as Action can be any service that a person brings. I wanted to start a big project to fundraise for my home region of Zaporizhzhia. That motivated me to engage more students to do something big for their Service as Action project. It’s great preparation for our adult life. We can have some experience of how business works, how to organize, how to manage, how to market. Marketing is my favorite part.”
When combat began in her hometown, Anastasiia’s family fled to Munich. She spent 6th & 7th-grade at MIS. She returned to Ukraine as an 8th-grader and is back again at MIS for 9th-grade. Despite facing the daunting task of transitioning in and out of a war zone, learning English and German languages, and adapting to a new culture and educational system, she is grateful and feels supported by the MIS community. “I’ve never been in a school like this before because here, I’m actually so inspired by the way the staff and other students are so supportive of people like me and ideas like mine. This is a great place for me to get support for my community in Ukraine and get some experience in business in my senior school years” says Anastasiia.
Anastasiia’s project, called “Creativity for Peace”, aims to support schools in the Zaporizhzhia region to build bomb shelters. Ukrainian schools with bomb shelters are considered fortunate as they are able to provide in-person education, allowing students to maintain social connections with friends and get one-to-one support from teachers. Anastasiia feels grateful because “what I experienced in the capital was nothing compared to my hometown of Zaporizhzhia because there, less than half of the schools are equipped with shelters, so over half of the students there are stuck in online education. It turned out that those students haven’t attended in-person schools for over four years ever since the pandemic in 2020”.
Not only has Anastansiia fulfilled her Service as Action component, she has mobilized nearly 20 other Senior School students to participate in her project, allowing them to also fulfill their Service as Action project requirements. You can also support her project “Creativity for Peace” as their fundraising efforts continue throughout this school year. For this first fundraiser, she aims to raise awareness and engage MIS students with “something they like the most: buying candy and sweets. And it’s an advertisement of Ukraine’s culture. Ukraine has a really nice candy-producing company called Roshen. It was owned by the previous president of Ukraine. His candy is really nice, and it’s world-wide famous.”
Anastasiia admits that the emotional toll can be heavy, explaining that "I do feel kind of guilty to not be there with them. I often want to visit Ukraine to say hi to my friends there, but I still think I’m of more use if I stay here and can do something that can actually helps them from here.”