The savED Foundation conducted a study on the impact of education on social capital in communities
The international charitable foundation savED presented the results of a social study entitled ‘War, Education and Social Capital: Three Years of Full-Scale Invasion,’ conducted in 2025.
Based on the results of a survey of students in grades 8-11, their parents, teachers, and school administrators, analysts studied the extent to which today’s teenagers feel a sense of belonging to their native communities and the future of Ukraine as a whole, as well as the extent to which the educational environment influences the development, socialisation, trust-building, and sense of personal prospects among young people. In particular, the researchers attempted to establish a link between the restoration of access to education in the affected regions and the future of social capital and community resilience during the war.
The study was initiated by the international charitable foundation savED and implemented by the sociological agency Vox Populi agency in collaboration with the savED team, with financial support from the International Renaissance Foundation and USAID.
In total, more than 120 schools from all regions controlled by the Ukrainian government, including institutions in frontline territories and schools with a high proportion of internally displaced persons, participated in the online survey during May-June 2025. Among the various categories of participants, the largest number of interviews — 1,924 — were conducted directly with schoolchildren. In addition to the national quantitative survey, analysts conducted an in-depth study of five separate communities in the Mykolaiv, Kyiv and Odesa regions.
According to the results of the study, among the participants surveyed, teenagers are the least optimistic about the future of Ukraine. 46% of them believe in the future of the country, 16% are pessimistic, and 33% are undecided. At the same time, teachers and representatives of administrations are more optimistic, with 67% and 88% respectively.
When it comes to future employment, 40% of teenagers are critical about the possibility of finding a decent job in their community and in Ukraine as a whole. However, the same number of schoolchildren (40%) see such opportunities for themselves. Compared to the savED study conducted in 2023, the number of students who would like to move abroad has remained almost unchanged — 22% versus 26% in previous surveys. Currently, 52% want to stay in Ukraine (53% in 2023), but only 30% of them want to stay in their city/village.
According to the study, teenagers’ desire to remain living in their native town, i.e. in Ukraine, is influenced by their sense of belonging to the community. 53% of students feel completely or mostly that they belong to the community, while almost a third (32%) do not feel it at all or feel it only weakly.
The main factors contributing to this sense of belonging are satisfaction with education, having friends, and the ease of establishing new connections. For example, 71% of students who are satisfied with their education feel part of the community, while only 28% of those who are dissatisfied feel this way. An important factor is also students’ extracurricular activities. 69% of teenagers who consider their activities to be meaningful have a strong sense of belonging to the community, while among those who do not feel this way, only 20% do.
Despite the fact that the overall share of distance learning in the country has almost halved over the past two years — from 44% to 20% — the study clearly demonstrates the uneven state of educational conditions in different regions of the country, which in the long term affects the resilience of communities. In frontline regions, 49% of students continue to attend school exclusively in a distance learning format. This contrasts sharply with other regions, where about 90% of students always or mostly attend school in person.
57% of students attending school in person have many friends at school, while among online students this figure is 41%. At the same time, only 42% of all students believe that their school offers sufficient opportunities to participate in clubs or sections, which is particularly limited in distance learning. At the same time, the largest proportion of teenagers who highly value the role of school in their future self-realisation come from frontline regions (52%).
“We see that school is not only a place for lessons, but a sense of belonging to it is not only an emotional indicator, but an important component of social capital, signalling the level of rootedness, inclusion and participation in the community. The availability of quality educational opportunities for children and teenagers is a critical factor in the resilience of communities and their ability to recover and develop further. After three years of searching for tools that would help to restore access to education as a service relatively quickly and safely, we at the savED Foundation realised one key thing: people need people. The foundation has created and supports a network of more than 100 educational centres called ‘Vuliki’ (Beehives), which provide opportunities for extracurricular activities, offline learning and socialisation. In many places, especially in the Kharkiv region, ‘Vuliki’ are de facto underground educational spaces. Often, they are the only place that functions offline and becomes a centre for community gathering, a youth space, a hub for clubs, and a hangout for teenagers,” says Hanna Novosad, co-founder of the savED foundation.
Among other indicators, the authors of the study ‘War, Education and Social Capital: Three Years of Full-Scale Invasion’ also analysed changes in the psycho-emotional state of schoolchildren and the extent of their educational losses. Thirty-three per cent of adolescents directly stated that they had increased anxiety (in 2023, 37 per cent felt anxiety). There has been a positive shift in dynamics: two years ago, 26 per cent of students reported a need for psychological support, which is 5 per cent more than in 2025. Also, compared to 2023, the proportion of school administrators who recognise that children have educational losses has increased — 82% compared to 66% in previous surveys. Only 29% of administrators see an improvement in academic performance over two years, 28% point to a deterioration, and the rest see no change. Among teachers, there has been a noticeable increase in the proportion of those who consider the lack of parental support to be a barrier to successful learning for children — this figure has risen from 9% to 24%.
savED is a charitable foundation dedicated to rebuilding life in affected communities through educational, social and infrastructure solutions. The foundation sets up shelters, educational centres, temporary educational spaces, and implements a programme to overcome educational losses for schoolchildren and involves teenagers in the restoration and development of their own communities through the UActive programme. The foundation works systematically in the Chernihiv, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
Source: Detector Media
