In Ukraine, education has had to move underground, online and into shelters. Bombed schools, air-raid alarms and displacement have reshaped childhood. Yet children and teachers keep showing up: in metro classrooms, in kindergartens with bomb shelters, in damaged schools near the border. This series follows education in emergency as both a right and a lifeline during war.
Copyright photo: © Antti Yrjönen for Finn Church Aid
Finn Church Aid (FCA) is Finland’s largest international aid organization, with over 70 years of experience. Specializing in the world’s most fragile contexts, it works with the most vulnerable people regardless of their religious beliefs, ethnicity, or political convictions. Its mission is summarized in the motto: Action for Human Dignity. Finn Church Aid’s work in Ukraine focuses on education, psychosocial support and the rehabilitation of school structures. Since 2022, FCA has repaired damaged schools, equipped and rehabilitated bomb shelters, created digital and temporary learning spaces, and trained teachers and school psychologists so children can continue learning during war. By the end of 2025, FCA said its work had benefited 109,805 children and 8,761 teachers; 45 schools had been repaired and 132 bomb shelters repaired or equipped.
Antti Yrjönen is a Finnish photojournalist and documentary photographer with over a decade of experience reporting in Finland and internationally. Working with media, NGOs, and news agencies, his assignments range from humanitarian issues, conflict, and crises in places such as Somalia, Syria, South Sudan, and Ukraine, to stories of everyday life closer to home. He has also worked as a photographer-fixer for international media in Finland.
For Yrjönen, photography is a dialogue—an exchange between the subject, the viewer, and the photographer. He looks for nuance and the realities that are easily overlooked, sometimes through quiet humour, sometimes through harder truths, aiming to prompt questions and deepen understanding.
Alongside visual work, he writes on visual culture, journalism ethics, media critique, and press freedom, including a regular column in Finland’s Journalisti magazine, and he occasionally lectures on responsible photojournalism and conflict reporting. He studied photojournalism at Tampere University and keeps hostile environment and emergency first aid qualifications current.
His work has been published by outlets including The New York Times, BBC, Le Temps, Bloomberg, Haaretz, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Condé Nast Traveller, Helsingin Sanomat, and Suomen Kuvalehti. He has received four News Photo of the Year awards and Sports Photo of the Year (2024), and was part of the team awarded the Suomen Kuvalehti Journalist Award (2020).
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