In November 2023, the annual International Children's Peace Prize ceremony was held to honor young changemakers fighting for children's rights.

The organizers had received 140 nominations from 35 countries.

The three teenagers developed apps to support fellow Ukrainian children who've fled the country amid war

and are having difficulty integrating into their host communities.

Our guest today is a member of the trio - Anastasiia Demchenko.

We just thought like as a lot of people emigrated already and they are like physically safe,

that still doesn't end all the problems because the refugees they still feel alone and they may be harassed.

And the refugees may have hard times to communicate what they need.

So we just started to think like OK, when a person is physically safe, like we are some of them like,

how we can make sure that the person is getting comfortable and getting like mentally and morally safe at the place they're in?

Anastasiia, who is 18, is currently attending high school in Japan.

We ask her about the app project, and what it means to her.

It's been two years since the start of Russia's military invasion of Ukraine.

With no end in sight to the conflict, over 10 million people have fled their homes,

both to other parts of the country and abroad.

That includes over 4 million children.

Anastasiia and her peers developed a pair of apps to support Ukrainian refugee children.

OK, so here is the Refee.

It was the first application that we created and with Refee, it is a shortened word for refugee,

it was created for Ukrainian refugee children aged from four to around eleven years old,

it may be much easier for children to navigate through a very simple application with a simple interface rather than a complex app.

The app offers three functions: call, translate, and GPS.

Press the call button, and it automatically connects to a nearby hotline for Ukrainian refugees.

The translate function brings up a list of phrases.

Press one, and the app displays it in the language of the region the user is in.

So the child just like presses what they need and after shows it to the volunteers on the border.

This application, we are letting the child to give a sign to people around them what do they need,

so after the adults can, like, figure out how can they help these children, how they can communicate further.

The second app they created is SVITY,

a conversation platform that facilitates communication between refugees and people in host communities.

The app prompts the user with questions like "what was the most memorable event in your life?"

As refugees and local community members submit answers, it creates opportunities for meaningful connection.

We work with a psychologist to create a list of questions.

So we hope that by the time these people know each other in real life

after like users using the application, maybe, seeing some interesting opinion

or like something about the community they want to know more, they'll have to communicate it

to the people in the community they know in real life.

Anastasiia currently lives in the town of Karuizawa in Nagano Prefecture, about 150 kilometers northwest of Tokyo.

Here, in this area of abundant nature, she attends a private international high school that cultivates global citizens.

Of the 200-member student body, about 70 percent are international exchange students.

They hail from 79 different countries and regions.

Anastasiia came to this school two years ago.

Her teachers and classmates have watched her balance her studies with her app project.

I think as her roommate I could see the whole process because she was always having meetings

and the times were like very weird because of the time zone, so like sometimes she had a meeting at 4AM and went to class after.

She presented to the school early in the year about the war in Ukraine itself and how it had impacted her.

She comes with the attitude of what actions need to be taken and not in the sense of fear or looming disaster, but what has to be done.

Anastasiia was born and raised in Dnipro, a city of one million in eastern Ukraine.

She met her partners two years ago, just as she was in the process of applying to the high school she's currently attending.

We all three met altogether when I was during the selection process to the school.

During the selection process we had one stage when we had to cooperate and like create a project plan with random people

and it just happened that we all three got in one team, and we had to work together to create this plan, and that's how we met.

The trio quickly became friends.

Later, they started planning to enter an app contest centered on developing solutions for social problems.

But then...

Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, carrying out attacks that resulted in civilian casualties.

First couple of days were like really...I would say messed up because like so many things were happening,

and it just like seemed enough confusion.

Amid the chaos, Anastasiia was desperate to do everything she could to help.

All my volunteering was connected to the invasions so I was like doing the masking nets for the army,

and also I became a volunteer at the hotline trying to help people who are in need to like,

figure out what should they do and like find shelter, find food and resources after they evacuated,

and I think like to some extent it helped me because when the invasion started it was this feeling of helplessness

because ever since it happens, it makes you feel like very destabilized and very like scared.

So I was just like volunteering like the fact that way I can do something for someone was helping me like to keep me going like

and to keep me actually thinking maybe like a bit positively about like that we can actually do something.

Her partners Sofiia and Anastasiia were also affected.

Sofiia, who was living in Kyiv, was eventually forced to flee abroad.

She traveled through Poland, Austria, Germany, and France, and now lives in the UK.

It's really difficult to be here without my dad and my brother, specifically, without my dad

because I'm very close to him and he's like a very important person in my life.

One month into Russia's invasion, Anastasiia was accepted into her current school, and she made the decision to leave home.

Meanwhile, the other Anastasiia decided to study in the U.S.

Far from home, the three of them began to think about what they could do to help their country.

One day, they came across a news story about a young Ukrainian boy.

There was like a story which became like very famous in the social media about Ukrainian boy from eastern Ukraine,

who had to move by himself to Slovakia without basically anything except like a bag with his like things.

"I think like for me, since I have a younger brother, and like at that time he was like, the boy who evacuated,

he was like eleven years old and my brother was like ten years old at the time,

and I was just thinking like how would I feel if my brother had to like cross like thousands of kilometers and go somewhere by himself?"

"And that actually like made me scared."

Their experiences of war motivated the trio to take action.

Through help from corporate donors, they were able to secure the funds to get their app project off the ground.

Anastasiia was mainly in charge of finances and communications.

Everything was new to her at first, and it took a while to get into the flow of things.

As no one of us had like the experience of managing such kind of project, we had some challenges with everything.

I felt like we had some challenges with coding as not one of us like had education specific for coding, and also sometimes even within us,

since all of us were like living in different time zones and like being international students we still had like

a lot to do beside this project so we had like combined a lot of spheres of life and sometimes some spheres were like fall behind for a bit.

Currently, since Anastasiia lives in the US and I'm in Japan, we have like fourteen hours of time zone difference in total,

so like for us getting all together it's like, on weekdays it's nearly impossible.

On weekends, like usually it's like 11PM for me.

For some meetings for example if it's like late night in Europe

it's like 5AM for me and usually I am the one who will wake up at 5AM for meetings.

The team sacrificed sleep to work on their apps.

Determined to help their Ukrainian brothers and sisters, they put everything they had into the project.

In fall 2023, they released their apps to the public.

Their efforts earned widespread recognition.

They won the International Children's Peace Prize, which is awarded to young changemakers who are shaping the future.

A visa delay prevented Anastasiia from attending the ceremony in person, so she joined in virtually.

As much as we want all children to have a safe and peaceful childhood, we understand that our reality is different.

This is why we are going to continue to work on our apps to be able to help not only Ukrainian children,

but also Refugee children from all over the world.

Anastasiia and her partners have created an organization called SVIT to continue their work to help refugee children.

And overall, like SVIT, like the name of the organization from Ukrainian means 'world'

and our like team motto or like our organization motto is 'bring light into the people's worlds'.

So by our application by enhancing communication, we want to make people's lives better and more full of happiness and gladness.

Do you have any words to live by?

So my motto is 'the brave will always have happiness,' it is a Ukrainian novel by a Ukrainian writer.

I'm very like home, I really love being at home, but like going to a foreign country to get my education was a brave decision for me,

but it brought me a lot of happiness.

And when I don't know what to choose and when I had difficult situation, I'm trying to remember that

sometimes to be happy we need to be brave and be courageous and be decisive in what we, like how we act and what we are doing in lives.