DNIPRO, Ukraine/MALMO, Sweden -- In their quest to bring Ukraine its second Eurovision crown in three years, singer-songwriters Alyona Alyona and Jerry Heil are performing a song about the strength of women. They’re also on a mission that puts that message to the test: raising the equivalent of over $250,000 to restore a war-damaged school in a southern region ravaged by Russian attacks.
“We want to rebuild it because we truly believe that by rebuilding the past, you can build the future for Ukrainian children [who] will be rebuilding the country after this” war, Heil said at a press conference for the 10 contenders who made it through to the finals in the first of two semifinal rounds.
The Eurovision Song Contest, a televised extravaganza with an annual audience of over 150 million, is being held in Malmo this year after Sweden won in 2023. The final is on May 11.
More than 3,500 educational institutions in Ukraine have been damaged and nearly 400 destroyed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to official figures.
Blasted by Russian rockets and shells, the school the duo’s fundraising will benefit, a K-12 institution of some 250 students in the village of Velyka Kostromka, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, has been closed for classes since March 2022.
Ukraine’s government-run fundraising initiative, United24, set the goal of raising 10 million hryvnyas ($253,000) to rebuild the Velyka Kostromka school, including 6 million hryvnas during Eurovision. Funds for the reconstruction project, estimated to cost 70 million hryvnyas ($1.8 million) in total, will go to the Ministry of Education.
As of April 29, Alyona Alyona and Jerry Heil had raised about 4 million hryvnyas ($101,000) for the Velyka Kostromka school. They hope to raise the raise the rest by May 25, one month after they launched the charity collection, the singers told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service.
For 32-year-old Alyona Alyona, one of Ukraine’s top rappers, known for her punchy, self-confident lyrics about being true to yourself, there’s a personal motivation for the fundraising.
Born Alyona Savranenko, she worked for four years as a village kindergarten principal and teacher in the region that surrounds Kyiv before a whimsical amateur video of her rapping -- a song called Rybki, or Little Fishes -- went viral in 2018, propelling her into the entertainment world.
In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion, she began collaborating with Jerry Heil (pronounced “Hail”), 28, a Spotify and YouTube star and former Kyiv region music student who finished third at Eurovision last year. Her real name is Yana Shemayeva.
Performed in Ukrainian and English, the lyrics of their Eurovision entry Teresa & Maria, a reference to Mother Teresa and the Virgin Mary, emphasize the strength of women who persevere, unite, and triumph over difficulties.
“No matter what, no matter what, the world is on her shoulders,” the song proclaims.
In the final, the pair will be up against 19 other viewer-chosen contestants as well as six “pre-qualified” finalists from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, the countries whose broadcasters “make the biggest financial contribution” to Eurovision, which is organized by the European Broadcasting Union.
Ukraine is the only three-time Eurovision winner in the 21st century, with victories in 2004, 2016, and 2022.
Alyona Alyona said that the pair chose to support a school in this year’s contest because most Europeans “cannot imagine what it is like…to scatter children from one class around the world, to take away their childhood.”
Talking with Velyka Kostromka teachers showed how the destruction of the school, where some had worked for decades, “really hit them, their psyche,” and “destroyed their lives,” said Jerry Heil.
Still, the teachers at the school have persevered.
Attacks on Velyka Kostromka, a village of about 2,785 people, began in early March 2022, as Russian forces advanced and occupied part of the Kherson region a few kilometers away.
Over the next few months, some of the school’s 250 students evacuated, but most of the staff stayed. Classes shifted online.
Yet the danger remained. On July 8, 2022, a Russian tank began firing at the school and an adjacent garden, recollected Tetyana Mahda, 53, a special-education teaching assistant who has worked there for over 15 years.
Along with some cleaning staff, Mahda rushed to take shelter in the school basement. With the basement’s walls and ceiling shaking, the women counted 16 explosions over the next hour and a half.
“When we came out, we saw that the garden, trees, everything was shattered, [electrical] wires were hanging,” Mahda recounted. “And the building…. They hit the second floor. Two classrooms collapsed immediately. There was a hole. But the building stood.”
A rocket that hit about 100 meters from the school blew out almost all the classroom windows and damaged the cafeteria and a storage space . Another rocket later hit a small park on school grounds just 30 meters from the building, causing further damage.
Intermittent attacks by heavy artillery and rockets continued until mid-October 2022, when Russian forces moved away from the village during a major Ukrainian counteroffensive, said principal Olha Dashko. Their parting shot was a rocket on the night of October 10-11 that destroyed the school’s left wing, connected to the gym.
Though teachers had “lived in hope all the time” that the school would be rebuilt after technical experts deemed it feasible, Dashko doubts that the funds would be raised without the promotional fundraising from Alyona Alyona and Jerry Heil’s Eurovision appearance.
“[W]e never thought that we would be at the center of attention not only of all of Ukraine, but also of the world; that there would be such publicity,” Dashko said.
The 200 largest donors will receive miniature copies of the giant key builders gave the school to mark its opening in 1977.
In celebrating their advance to the Eurovision final, both performers waved duplicates of that key to symbolize the school’s rebuilding. They wore outfits accessorized by keys to Eurovision’s May 5 opening ceremony.
Velyka Kostromka students drew 60 pictures about the school for the singers to take to Eurovision.
“We sincerely believe that the topic of reconstruction will be close to all countries” at Eurovision, Alyona Alyona said before the duo’s semifinal performance. “Some of them are apolitical. But donating to rebuilding is such a good thing.”
