About Us

About the Association

"Early Birds" NGO aims to create a world in which every premature baby and its family receive the highest level of medical, psychological and social support for the exercise of their rights and freedoms.

"Early Birds" NGO is a public organization whose main activities are advocacy of the rights of premature babies and their parents, informational support, conducting training, community mobilization and raising awareness of the general public about the challenges of premature labor.


The key activities of our association are:
🚑 Education about the rights of parents of premature babies
🚑 Psychological support for parents of premature babies
🚑 Educating and informing physicians with the involvement of international best practice
🚑 Advocacy for the implementation of standards of health care for newborn children together with the Association of Neonatologists of Ukraine
🚑 Promotion of modern methods of nursing premature babies, in particular the Mother Kangaroo Care as the gold standard of nursing
🚑 Prevention of occupational burnout of neonatologists.

The Association promotes the connection between parents and specialists, state authorities and pharmaceutical companies to create an effective dialogue aimed at improving the quality of care for premature babies.

Completed and current projects:

  • "Hotline" — information, legal, medical and psychological support for parents of premature babies;
  • Zero-separation campaign — dissemination of information about the importance of not-separating parents and babies at birth;
  • Support for the implementation of the health care reform, in particular, informational support for the implementation of the Medical Guarantee Programs from the National Health Service in the scope of follow up observation;
  • November 17, the World Prematurity Day in Ukraine — an annual event to draw public attention to the challenges of premature birth;
  • "Meetings with Love" — group therapy for parents who are in nursing care with their babies;
  • "Prevention of burnout of doctors";
  • "Miracle of the Octopuses" — a therapeutic project supporting parents of premature babies with the production of special knitted toys;
  • Photo exhibitions, for example, "Dads in focus"

From 2019 to 2021, the "Early Birds" Charitable Foundation (CF) worked within the structure of the organization and aimed to provide material support for neonatal departments in accordance with the priorities of the Association of Parents of Premature Babies.

The projects implemented by the CF include:
  • "Superheroes" — purchase of equipment for nursing premature babies in the nursing units;
  • "Gram of Love" — a project for the purchase of scales for neonatal departments;
  • "Protect a neonatologist" — a project for the purchase of personal protective equipment for doctors in neonatal departments.

We adhere to the following principles:

📊 Transparent reporting, meaning that we do not use private ban cards to raise funds and publish reports on the Association's web-page.
📊 We do not provide targeted help to a specific family, but contribute to the work of the public health system.
📊 Maximize resources for increased efficiency: we allocate our resources to those projects where we can be most effective and help to the most.
📊 Political non-involvement: the organization is not formally or informally part of any political/party structure, we do not work for the interests of individual politicians and do not publicly support them.
📊 We support the idea of community development throughout Ukraine to involve the greatest number of cities in the network.
📊 We support innovation in approaches, work methods and areas of activity and adopt the best experience of foreign and Ukrainian colleagues.

We are grateful for your support and are always happy to discuss individual projects of cooperation and interaction as part of one of our activities.
We are honored to be partners

EFCNI - European foundation for the care of newborn infants

GLANCE - Global alliance for newborn care

Areas of activity

Prevention of premature birth
Information about risk factors so that pregnant women and doctors know what to pay attention to in order to prevent premature birth
Care and support of "early birds"
Implementation of European Standards for the care of newborn children. Improving the quality of care for prematurely born children
Follow up observation
Further care and rehabilitation of children early after discharge

Our Achievements

We represent Ukraine on the international stage
We represent Ukraine in the international community of patient organizations EFCNI (European Foundation for the Care of Newborn Infants) among 70 Associations of parents from 60 countries of the world.
We raise standards
Since 2018, Ukraine has started the implementation of the European standards for the health care of newborns, which will have an impact on future generations in Europe and beyond for decades to come. We closely cooperate with the Association of Neonatologists of Ukraine on this issue.
We inform
Every year, we conduct an information campaign for the World Day of Premature Children, in the framework of which we highlight Sofia Church in Kyiv, the Opera Theater and other buildings, as well as organize educational events throughout Ukraine.
We cooperate
We have established effective and active cooperation with the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, perinatal centers and maternity homes, other state and private institutes, organizations and companies.

Video About our Work


We share with you a video about our activities. After all, the organizers and volunteers of the association are also mothers of premature babies who have already gone through the process of raising their babies and are ready to share their experience with others!

Our Team

Our team is our strength. We work together on the successful implementation of all projects and are professionals in our fields.
Oleksandra Balyasna
Chairman and co-founder of the NGO "Early Birds"
Yulia Aleksandrova
Psychologist
Head of the parent support department
Support for bereaved families
Elizaveta Kravchenko
Head of the Communications Service
Evgenia Kubakh
Member of the Advisory Board of the NGO "Early Birds".
Expert on women's rights during pregnancy and childbirth.
Coordinator of organizational development of the Center for Civil Liberties.
Natalia Reznichenko
Accountant








Ksenia Vervega
Coordinator of the Lviv branch of "Early Birds"
Anna Leniv
Coordinator of NGO "Early Birds" in Ivano-Frankivsk
Administrator of regional offices
Lesia Baskova
Coordinator of NGO "Early Birds" in Ivano-Frankivsk
Website developer and administrator of ranniptashky.org
Yulia Mykolyshyn
Coordinator of the "Wonder Octopus" project in Lviv
Tetiana Maletska
Coordinator of the "Early Birds" parent support program
Tetyana But
Perinatal psychologist
Doctor-psychologist in the Maternity Hospital No. 1
Olga Kozlenko
Translator, volunteer
 








Iryna Mygunova
Coordinator of the "Early Birds" parent support program