Plast members from Ukraine attend counselors' courses (09/01/91)

Plast members from Ukraine attend counselors' courses

HUNTER, N.Y. - Two international Plast leadership courses - Shkola Bulavnykh and Lisova Shkola - which train camp counselors for teenagers (yunatstvo) took place here from June 23 to July 6 with 73 youths and young adults participating.

For the first time, some of the participants were from Ukraine. Enough money was raised to have 16 Plast members came from Ukraine, two from Poland and five from Argentina. Also among the course participants were some Plast members from Germany and, naturally, from Canada and the United States.

Orest Hawryluk, the head of the Supreme Soviet Plast Bulava, Ivanna Hankewycz, director of the U.S. division of Plast girls, and Olha Kuzmowycz, the head of the U.S. National Plast Command, visited the two camps. The head of the training camp course for boys' counselors (Lisova Shkola) was Petro Sodol, while Julia Shyshka, helped by Olha Kuzmowycz and Dora Horbachevska, directed the course for girls' counselors (Shkola Bulavnykh).

Participants from Ukraine and Poland will be able to be counselors at Plast camps in the U.S. this summer. They will also attend a short seminar on how to lead Plast meetings year-round, and will travel and sightsee.

Plast members and leaders have expressed hope that this is just the first step, and that there will be many more such exchanges among members of the youth organization newly revived in Ukraine and those in the West.