Sitting in a classroom in the Romanian capital of Bucharest, US First Lady Jill Biden met a group of Ukrainian refugee mothers and educators on Saturday, praising the women for their strength and resilience.

Svitlana Salamatova and Anna Sushko, both founders of NGOs focused on women’s issues and education, fled Kyiv soon after Russia invaded the country on February 24.

Another of the women, Anastasiia Konovalova, left her home in Odessa with her toddler son. Svitlana Gollyak and her 8-year-old daughter hid in a basement in the bomb-shelled city of Kharkiv before heading westwards and on to neighbouring Romania.

Despite their ordeal, the women quickly looked for ways to use their skills to help fellow refugees, setting up a kindergarten and several classrooms for Ukrainian children in Bucharest with help from local NGOs, volunteers and officials.

“I crossed the border with my three-year-old son and everything I was thinking about was how to save my child from a city that was bombed,” Konovalova told Biden, herself a teacher.