Lena Kruse, Founder of USOY

Ukraine Spectrum of Youth hosted an educational webinar aimed at educating international youth about their autistic and neurotypical peers affected by the Russian-Ukrainian war. As a guest speaker, we invited Ms. Iryna Sergiyenko, an esteemed advocate of autism and the Ukraine crisis, as well as the director of the INGO "Child With Future", to talk about her first-hand experiences from working with said children who have suffered the life-threatening experience of living in a country of war. Through that, we were able to facilitate awareness of the situations of all Ukrainian youth and their families, which is part of our mission.

Together with 16 young and inquisitive participants who contributed their own very creative ideas on how to improve inclusion in two case study sessions, we were able to create a very insightful and eye-level learning atmosphere. This was facilitated by case studies that were created with the very important support and insights of Jasmin Jemel who is diagnosed with ASD, in order to meet one of our maxims "nothing about us without us". The very sensible contributions and questions by the participants clearly showed the effect of these case studies: a higher sensibility towards the topic of autism and the necessary tools for better understanding the individual and numerous perspectives of autistic people had been created. Secondly, as founder of our organization, I held a presentation on the cognitive science of music as well as on how music therapy, which is a highly evidence-based discipline, can support autistic youth to highlight the significance of making music therapy available for Ukrainian children. Apart from new organizational and management-related learnings, the preparation of this presentation and event strengthened my belief in the importance of music in aiding Ukrainian children, which was demonstrated through the case studies. Participants were given the task of thinking about what musical styles could best help Zach, our fictive autistic toddler who appears to experience more calmness through music. After discussing multiple specific options—the old jazz classics like Ella Fitzgerald, or maybe some very structured Bach or Mozart—we found ourselves arriving to a collective answer. It takes the symbolic meaning of our organization’s logo into consideration, which stands for our values in regard to autism and supporting youth. This becomes visible in the context of our case study: While there may be musical styles more prone to supporting autistic children, autism is a spectrum, and therefore every autistic child is different. There shouldn't be a one-size-fits-all solution for how to best support all autistic people and all youth. As a result, it is our responsibility—be it at school, at work, or in society in general—to create an inclusive environment where autistic people are given the choice of expressing their needs, which music can help do as something that is deeply woven into every human being. Of all the things that were learned, this was the most fundamental thing we discussed in order to understand the need to support Ukrainian youth.