The international charitable organization Parimatch Foundation launches a new product for children as a part of its Mental Health program — therapeutic art coloring to overcome stressful situations. The project was created with the participation of the Institute of Cognitive Modeling, under the authorship and methodology of expert Victoria Nazarevich.
The children’s coloring book is based on Victoria Nazarevych’s author’s methodology. She is a practicing psychologist with 25 years of experience working with children, a professor at the Department of Psychology and Pedagogy of Kyiv International University, a Candidate in Psychological Sciences, and a child psychology and art therapy expert.
A detailed set of therapeutic coloring exercises is developed and based on the principles of play therapy, which allows parents to help their child without the additional involvement of psychologists when he or she is stressed, angered, afraid or withdrawn.
The manual is based on the use of art therapy and fairy tale therapy techniques that have already proven their effectiveness in working with children who have experienced traumatic stress disorder.
— War and any changes, in general, make children feel disorder or inner chaos. Therefore, in such cases, adults should offer the child a system of internal self-regulation that will help to cope with the state when it is tough inside and the child does not understand what is happening. Art therapy is excellent in stressful situations when you need to relieve bodily tension. Therefore, when it is difficult for a child and he or she feels a burden inside, the coloring book offers several effective exercises that will help to cope with stress, — says Victoria Nazarevych.
The coloring book consists of 10 tasks, each of which helps the child to cope with different emotions and states. You can find and download free art coloring on the Parimatch Foundation website — preferably in A3 or A4 formats alongside step-by-step video instructions and advice from a qualified psychologist Victoria Nazarevych. Video guides added on the website will help to clarify conditions and emotions when a child may need a particular section of the coloring.
To work, you will need colored pencils and a little patience to accompany the child at each stage of the tasks proposed in the coloring book. Adults need to be close, supportive, and interested in the child’s impressions: what was annoying, upsetting, or, conversely, what the kid liked the most while drawing.
Art coloring will be useful for parents and guardians, teachers, educators, volunteers of children’s centers, social workers, curators of children’s programs, inclusive assistants, and teacher-defectologists. As well as for helping professionals who are in direct interaction with the child and ensure his mental, moral and physical well-being. The project complements several products that are already helping Ukrainian children not only in Ukraine but also abroad, where many families who were forced to leave the country are now.
It should be noted that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the international charitable organization Parimatch Foundation has been making efforts to help the children of Ukraine. One of the main areas of work is psychological support for children affected by russian aggression. Recently, the Foundation presented the first Ukrainian-language collection of children’s audio fairy tales «Secret stories of small and big victories» as a part of its Mental Health program. You can listen to the audiobook for free on the ABUK platform, in the «Audio» section of the MEGOGO application on iOS and Android smartphones, and cars with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay audio systems.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) plans to switch the banking sector from a survival strategy to a strengthening strategy in 2023, its head Andriy Pyshnyy said.
“The strategic priority is to start working today to move from a survival strategy to a strengthening strategy in 2023. Because of this, we will continue to work on development of the concept, which should assess the resilience of the financial sector, assess the quality of assets, give parameters for future stress testing and which should determine the horizons and volumes of future additional capitalization,” he said at a press briefing on Monday.
According to him, in this way it will be possible to ensure a working resilient financial system.
The pace of harvesting in Ukraine due to rainy weather is significantly inferior to last year’s, especially for corn, which by November 4 was harvested on 27% of the area (1.14 million hectares), while last year on this date was thinned 61% of the area (3.3 million hectares).
“Harvesting in Ukraine is slower than last year, and the average moisture content is very high due to the long rains in September and October. Farmers hope that frosts will reduce the moisture content of corn from 22-28% to an acceptable 16-20%, so they plan to postpone harvesting until winter or spring, especially if exports from the Black Sea ports are blocked, which will lead to lower prices,” according to the website of the electronic grain exchange GrainTrade on Monday.
Besides, this season the cost of drying grain has increased two or three times as compared to last year, from 60-100 UAH/ton/percent to 160-250 UAH/ton/percent due to the rise in price of gas and diesel fuel.
The exchange also specified that agrarians of Vinnitsa and Chernovtsy regions have already finished sunflower harvesting, while in Kharkiv region only 42% of sunflower crops are threshed. Most of all 380 thousand tons of soybeans were harvested in Khmelnytsky region and most of all the sugar beets (1.9 million tons) – in Vinnitsa region. The highest yield of grain and leguminous crops – 6.22 tons / ha was obtained by farmers of Khmelnytsky region.
As it was reported, Ukrainian agrarians harvested 53.11 million tons of major crops from the total area of 15.13 million hectares on November 4, with 4.3 million tons from 2 million hectares from October 28 – November 4.
The final yield of wheat in this season amounted to 19.2 million tons from 4.7 million hectares, barley – 5.5 million tons from 1.6 million hectares, rape – 3.1 million tons from 1.96 million hectares, pea – 261 tons from 111.5 million hectares.
In addition, November 4, 9 million tons of sunflower was gathered from 4.1 million hectares, 6.4 million tons of sugar beets from 105 thousand hectares, 6.3 million tons of corn from 1.1 million hectares, 3.1 million tons of soy from 1.3 million hectares, 151 tons of buckwheat from 111 thousand hectares and 98 tons of millet from 42.6 ha.
According to the Ministry, the average yield by all crops in the current season was 40.7 c/ha, including corn – 55.4 c/ha, wheat – 41.2 c/ha, of barley – 35.1 c/ha, rape – 28.9 c/ha, soybeans – 23.9 c/ha, peas – 23.4 c/ha, millet – 23.1 c/ha, sunflower – 22.0 c/ha, buckwheat – 13.6 c/ha, sugar beets – 488 c/ha.
The average value of U.S. stock funds rose 8.7 percent in October on the back of a rising stock market, according to data from Refinitiv Lipper.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 14% during October, posting its best month-over-month gain since 1976 (the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were up in single-digit percentages).
Since the beginning of 2022, the value of equity funds has fallen 18.1%, compared with a jump of 22.5% last year.
The value of international equity funds rose 5.1% in October, but has collapsed 25% since the beginning of the year.
The pressure on stock markets this year has also come from a series of aggressive interest rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed).
Last week, the Fed expectedly raised its benchmark interest rate by 75 basis points at the end of its fourth consecutive meeting – to 3.75-4% per annum, the highest since January 2008.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said during a press conference following the meeting that the Fed may begin discussing a slowdown in the pace of rate hikes as early as the December meeting. However, he noted that it’s too early to talk about a pause in the cycle of rate hikes, its ceiling will be higher than previously expected.
Thus, the October rally of the stock market may be only a pause in the long-term decline, writes The Wall Street Journal.
Investors will continue to follow the statements of the Fed management and the regulator’s decisions on rates in the near term.
In turn, the European Central Bank (ECB) last week raised all three key interest rates by 75 bps for the second consecutive meeting. The benchmark interest rate on loans was raised to 2%, the deposit rate to 1.5% and the rate on margin loans to 2.25%.
Meanwhile, the value of bond funds declined in October and has fallen sharply since the beginning of the year. Funds focused on investment grade debt securities lost an average of 1.4% in October and 16.2% YTD.
FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) in November compared to October reduced the forecast of world grain production in 2022 by 4.9 million tons – to 2.764 billion tons, according to the report of the organization.
The new figure is 1.8% lower than last year’s harvest. “The bulk of the revision concerns wheat, but the forecast for global coarse grain production has also been slightly reduced,” the document says. Thus, the wheat harvest estimate is down by 3.4 million tons to 783.8 million tons. However, it is 0.6% higher than in 2021 and is an absolute record.
As the experts explain, the revision of the wheat harvest forecast “is almost entirely due to production indicators in the U.S. – a decrease in yields and the reduction of harvesting areas. Forecasts for other producing countries, where the harvest is coming to an end, have not changed.
Forage grain harvest estimates are down 1.3 million tons to 1.467 billion tons. That’s down 2.8 percent from last year. “This is the first decline in production in four years,” the report notes. Most of this month’s decline in the forecast is due to lower corn production estimates in the U.S. and the EU, where recent data show the effects of the drought were more widespread than previously thought. Ukraine’s corn production forecast has been raised.
According to the report, corn acreage will remain planted in 2023, “but further expansion may be constrained by high production costs.”
A new mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will start on November 11 and will probably last until November 17, NBU head Andriy Pyshny said.
“Final arrangements will be formulated based on the results of the second mission, which will start on November 11. We plan that it will last until November 17,” he said during a press briefing on Monday.
According to his words these technical discussions with the participation of him and the Minister of Finance will have to work out the program outline which will form the basis of the NBU action plan for the coming years and, probably, will be the basis of the extended financing program which the Ukrainian team hopes for.
He reminded that last month the work within the frames of the IMF mission held in Vienna had started. On it the NBU and the IMF consolidated the position of monetary and fiscal policy, Pyshny noted.
“In Vienna there were very substantive and, I won’t say simple, but very constructive discussions on the whole range of issues related to the macroeconomic situation, currency policy, credit and monetary relations, financial stability, fiscal consolidation of interaction between the government and the NBU, the need for more active interaction in financing the needs of the Ukrainian budget, domestic debt market”, – said the NBU head.
