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Overcoming stroke with the power of learning and family love

FAST Heroes is an international program aimed at teaching children aged 5-9 years to recognize stroke symptoms and develop the skill of calling an emergency medical service. The program was developed with the support of the Angels Initiative and approved by the World Stroke Organization.

In the 2020-2021 academic year, the program was implemented in 14 countries. In Ukraine, we coordinate the program and have become a global leader among the 14 countries that launched it for the first time. We achieved 35% of all global results. Moreover, there are already lives saved in Ukraine thanks to the program.

According to WHO, stroke is the second most common cause of death.

Each year, approximately 110,000 cases of stroke occur in Ukraine.


Primarily, those at risk are people over 70 years old – grandmothers and grandfathers. Many stroke patients do not receive timely assistance because they arrive at hospitals too late. This happens, in part, because people do not know how to recognize the symptoms of a stroke. A patient must receive medical assistance within 4.5 hours of symptom onset.

Young children often spend time with their grandparents and can also be a source of new knowledge for their relatives. Families can save the lives of their elderly relatives by learning the symptoms of a stroke.

The challenge was to launch an educational program during the pandemic and remote learning, engage teachers and families across Ukraine, and raise awareness about stroke symptoms.

Additionally, the FAST Heroes project was being implemented in Ukraine for the first time. To encourage teachers to register on the website, it was necessary to simultaneously raise awareness about the program through a communication campaign.

The strategy was based on developing partnerships to engage proactive, innovative teachers in the ambassador program, who would spark interest in the project and involve teachers from all over Ukraine. A key aspect of the integrated communication campaign for FAST Heroes was focusing on working with target audiences.

Ambassadors program
We have agreed to partner with the educational organization Osvitoria to join the community of modern active teachers.
Support of the Ministry of Education
The official support of the Ministry of Education, facilitated by the agency, helped to attract media attention to the project and gather a large number of teachers for training webinars.
Communication campaign
The official launch of the FAST Heroes project in spring 2021 was supported by a press conference, active work with media and opinion leaders, the launch of a Facebook page and YouTube channel, and an advertising campaign on social media. We actively conducted Zoom webinars for teachers with a demonstration of the website interface with program materials. We placed outdoor advertising in the Kyiv subway for free.
Guinness World Record
Active participation in the creation of the largest photo album of people in superhero masks, which became a unique feature of the project for teachers and children.
Ukraine has become the undisputed leader among all 14 countries that launched the FAST Heroes program in the spring of 2021.
Three Ukrainian schools made it to the top 5 of the ranking among all participating schools in the world (the results of student activity - the number of points earned for completed lessons and games on the site).
We have achieved more than a third of the total global results of the first wave of the project.
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66%
Increase in knowledge of stroke symptoms among program participants (among all countries)
2258
Number of teachers engaged in Ukraine (39% of global results)
26 828
Number of students engaged in Ukraine (37% of global results)
3 655 084
Total coverage of the project for six months in the media, in publications of opinion leaders and social networks
The most important result is that the program has already saved the grandmother's life:
Olya, a 7-year-old pupil from Lviv, was at home together with her grandmother. When her grandma started having trouble speaking, the girl recognized the stroke symptom. Olya learned all stroke symptoms at FAST Heroes lessons, and she vividly remembered the cartoons with superheroes, and how they explained these symptoms. The girl called her parents, and they called the ambulance immediately. Oya’s grandmother is back at home, and feeling well and healthy now, because she got help on time. BBC International shot a documentary film about this story.