“Open your heart” is Roman Panchenko's volunteer project launched from the "Freedom to Ukraine” non-profit organization in Ukraine.

The main goals of Open Your Heart are to help heal preschool and school-age children from the effects of trauma and adapt them to life in peacetime through psychological and artistic activities.
This requires working on:
● removing aggressiveness
● fighting fears
● releasing creative and physical energy.

War time made it necessary to apply new strategies. And so we developed a performance therapy approach with child psychologists and members of the theater community.

Our volunteer group came up with the idea of interactive performances as we debuted of our “Princesses Are Different” production — based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales “The Princess and the Pigman” and “The Princess on the Pea” — for children in the Kharkiv subway in the first months of the war.

Kharkiv suffered greatly from bombing in the early days of Russia's full-scale invasion. Residents were forced to take refuge way down in the city's deep extensive subway system. For the first several months much of the population was forced to live underground. We did more than 200 performances and reached over 10,000 children and their families in that time. We saw the happy eyes of the young viewers as they forgot about the war and traveled back in time to their peaceful everyday lives.

Now I, Roman Panchenko, producer and volunteer, Oleksandra Shlykova, actress from the Kharkiv Puppet Theater, and actor Anton Andriushchenko continue to travel to the frontline and liberated cities of Kharkiv and Donetsk regions to support children in this horrible time of tragedy and destruction.

We put on interactive performances that allow the young members of the audience to become characters in the play, share their emotions, and in turn receive positive therapeutic effects. With the games of the Interactive performances along with physical education classes, we establish a trusting atmosphere and carry out art therapy performances in problem areas that need to be addressed.

Many places such as Slaviansk, Kramatorsk, Balakliya, Pesochin, and Valky are waiting for our interactive therapeutic performances. The need is so great, we would like to meet with the young audiences on a regular basis. These cities were chosen not by chance, but because they are the centers for evacuated people with children from the frontline. 

We are planning to start our trips on June 15, so we really need your support to pay for fuel, vehicle repairs, consumables for the performance, costumes, and updated props and toys. We are planning 10 performances. Each one requires $500 USD.