The yearbook is a history of the year, the best of what a school has done over the course of 10 months. When choosing a yearbook theme, yearbook teams or clubs work hard to identify a meaningful and unique theme.

When the yearbook team at Kyiv International School embarked on this process last September, we considered and debated a wide variety of themes, and finally settled on the theme: HOME. For many students and families, KIS is a home – a place they are loved, appreciated, challenged and supported and this theme seemed right for us!

When Russian armed forces invaded Ukraine on February 24th, 2022, the idea of home was both shattered and reinforced. Millions of Ukrainians fled their homeland and their homes. Our physical school closed, and students and staff spread out around the world, often with only a couple of suitcases, our houses left behind. But at KIS our sense of home, of community, remained intact. We turned to our teachers, students, colleagues and classmates for support, community, and solace.

By March 1st, the yearbook team was reduced to just a couple of students, but they were committed to producing a yearbook, as an important history of our year. Knowing we could not get hard copies of the book to families around the world, we reached out to Issuu, a digital publishing company, who generously offered to help us digitalize our content.

We are thrilled to be able to send this history of KIS to our families around the world as a remembrance of the 2021-2022 school year and are happy to share a small part of our book with our CEESA community. While going home to Kyiv may not be possible for many families and students at this time, we continue to hold our KIS HOME in our hearts.