1992: A LOOK BACK: Multi-faceted aid to Ukraine (12/27/92)

1992: A LOOK BACK

Multi-faceted aid to Ukraine

With the advent of an independent Ukraine on the world scene, aid to the former Soviet republic in 1992 took on a new dimension as government agencies and the private sector scrambled to fill its many needs. The seasoned diaspora community continued to provide assistance, launching numerous new medical, educational and embassy-related projects, while private individuals began assistance-to-Ukraine projects of their own.

Government

On January 23 in Washington, a 47-nation conference to coordinate assistance to the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union launched the United States' "Operation Provide Hope," which allocated $645 million to humanitarian, technical, medical and agricultural assistance programs.

On February 10, the first in a series of U.S. Air Force sorties of medical and food shipments arrived in Kiev. The Operation Provide Hope shipments, which were delivered to hospitals and orphanages, contained Department of Defense excess food and medical stocks and included Operation Desert Storm supplies. The shipments continued to arrive in Kiev on February 13 and 14, and similar shipments arrived in Kharkiv and Lviv on February 12,17 and 18.

Throughout the year, the United States Information Agency, an independent foreign affairs agency within the executive branch that supports U.S. foreign policy and national security interests abroad through information programs, awarded various organizations and foundations grants to pursue assistance projects for Ukraine. The grants, part of the U.S. government's technical assistance program to the newly independent states, are funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

In September, the USIA awarded the National Forum Foundation a $100,000 grant to develop a municipal and public administration training program in Russia and Ukraine. The National Forum Foundation, a research and education organization located in Washington that promotes political and economic freedom programs in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, will develop a talent bank of American experts to conduct the training program and place 18 American experts on site for a period of 10 weeks to train city government officials.

In October, the USIA awarded a $345,322 grant to the International Executive Service Corps, an organization that recruits U.S. executives to volunteer for overseas management consulting assignments, to implement a one-year public policy and administration training program in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. The IESC project will provide workshops, internships and consultations in public policy and administration in Kharkiv, and will be assisted by Kharkiv's Sister City, Cincinnati.

In November, the USIA awarded the Iowa Peace Institute of Grinnell, Iowa, a $177,560 grant to implement a journalism exchange program for 15 students in Cherkasy. Co-sponsored by the Cherkasy-Iowa Agriculture and Culture Center, the exchange program will provide intensive English-language study in Cherkasy and journalism internships in the U.S.

In May, the United States launched its Peace Corps program in Ukraine, agreed to by Presidents George Bush and Leonid Kravchuk during the latter's May 6-11 visit to the U.S. The Ukraine program will focus strictly on small business development, and is the first of its kind to be launched by the government agency. In September, acting Peace Corps Director Barbara Zartman appointed Ukrainian American Yaroslav I. Dutkewych of Michigan Ukraine's Peace Corps director. In November, the Peace Corps' first 60 volunteers and Mr. Dutkewych arrived in Kiev.

In September, USAID and the American International Health Alliance launched a health-care partnership program between hospitals in the U.S. and the newly independent states. The University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, the Pennsylvania Hospital and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia will forge a partnership with the Ukrainian State Medical University, Kiev Children's Hospital No. 2 and the Kiev Obstetrical and Gynecological Hospital No. 3. Philadelphia physicians, hospital administrators, nursing and technical staff will assist their Ukrainian partners on a volunteer basis in establishing model programs in the fields of prenatal diagnosis, perinatology and neonatology.

Private sector

Thoughts of Faith, an Evangelical Lutheran mission to Ukraine run by Pastor John Shep, a Ukrainian American, organized and funded numerous medical and social service projects in 1992. In January, Thoughts of Faith sponsored 120 orphans from Ternopil to spend four months with foster families in the Chicago area.

In March it launched a "Medical Clinic on Wheels" project conceived by Dr. Stephen Dudiak and his wife, Lusia. The project provides mobile medical and dental care in the Ternopil area and utilizes two 35-foot-long mobile units equipped with examining rooms and laboratory equipment. Medical care is provided by volunteer physicians from the U.S. and two Ternopil pediatricians.

Thoughts of Faith was instrumental in assisting in the creation of a law enforcement officials exchange program between Ukraine and the U.S. and donated three computer systems to the Drug, Corruption and Organized Crime Enforcement Department of the Security Service of Ukraine.

The mission has donated over 1 million Ukrainian-language Bibles and biblical children's literature to Ukraine and $100,000 to the children's textbook project of the Coordinating Committee to Aid Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Renaissance Foundation, a joint venture between the Soros Foundation, Zelenyi Svit, the Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Language Society and the Ukrainian Cultural Fund that sponsors programs promoting the building of an open, democratic society, continued to award numerous grants for educational, media and civil service projects. Established in April 1990, the Renaissance Foundation currently has offices in Kiev, Kharkiv, Donetske and Lviv. In 1991, $2-3 million in funding was approved. The foundation sponsors the Council of Advisors to the Presidium of the Supreme Council of Ukraine.

The Sabre Foundation of Somerville, Mass., continued to ship books to its Lviv affiliate, Sabre-Svitlo, and in October sent 1,480 Western civilization, political science and English-as-a-second-language textbooks to the University of Kiev-Mohyla Academy. Sabre also donated subscriptions to Ukraine to numerous journals and publications: seven different physics journals from the American Physical Society, eight subscriptions to astrophysics journals from the American Academy of Arts and Science and 50 subscriptions to the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Amsterdam-based Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry, in conjunction with the independent Ukrainian Psychiatric Association, launched a psychiatry book and magazine drive to stock four new psychiatric-medical libraries in Ukraine. The bulk of the 120 boxes of books and magazines arrived in Kiev in mid-September and were distributed to libraries in various oblasts. By the end of 1992, two Western psychiatric manuals were to be published in Ukrainian and distributed free of charge among Ukrainian psychiatrists.

The U.S.-Ukraine Foundation of Washington and Indiana University organized a Conference on American Economic Governance in September for a delegation of Ukrainian parliamentarians headed by Parliament Chairman Ivan Pliushch. The 15-day program provided a forum for the Ukrainian parliamentarians to study economic policy-making with their American counterparts.

The foundation also established the Pylyp Orlyk Institute for Democracy, a public policy research organization, and reference library at the U.S.-Ukraine Center in Kiev. The center is staffed by eight persons who assist the Washington office with a Washington-Kiev "Democracy Hotline," an electronic mail hook-up that facilitates communication between Ukrainian policy-makers and Western advisors.

The National Forum Foundation opened up its Central and Eastern European Institute Program to Ukraine in May. Ukrainian interns are given hands-on experience in the fields of journalism, public administration and business in five-week postings throughout the United States. The NFF also inaugurated an American Volunteers for International Development program that posts American experts in Ukraine for three months to provide on-site training in governance, media management and business development.

The University of Illinois School of Public Health in Chicago organized a consortium of academic institutions in the U.S. and abroad to participate in the Ukrainian Environmental Health Project in June. The UEHP faculty collaborate with their Ukrainian counterparts in three projects: The World Health Organization's European Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood, which includes the cities of Kiev, Lviv, Dniprodzerzhynske, Ivano-Frankivske and Mariupil; the Chernivtsi alopecia outbreak and a U.S. National Cancer Institute study of thyroid cancer related to Chornobyl. UEHP faculty are drawn from the University of Illinois, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, Loyola University, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Toronto Faculty Chornobyl Project and the University of Bristol.

Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences established a cooperative program with the Ukrainian Agricultural Academy in June which fosters faculty and scientist exchanges between the two institutions. A center for Ukrainian Agriculture was established at Penn State with $100,000 donated by the family of Alex and Helen Woskob.

In 1992, the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund of Short Hills, N.J., collected and shipped close to 180 tons of medical equipment and supplies aboard three Mria airlifts and two commercial air shipments to Ukraine. CCRF, which sponsors the Lviv Regional Specialized Children's Hospital for Chornobyl Problems, the Ukrainian National Oncological Center in Kiev, the Kiev Institute for Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Kharkiv Dispensary for Radiation Protection, also began a training program in the U.S. for physicians from the Lviv hospital. The program offers 30 Ukrainian doctors with diverse specializations an opportunity to learn the latest treatment and diagnostic techniques developed in the U.S. for up to one year.

This year, the CCRF was the beneficiary of a book-a-thon fund-raising drive held at the Buckingham, Brown and Nichols Lower School outside of Boston. Close to 170 schoolchildren collected pledges for every hundred pages they read, raising over $14,000 for the victims of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster.

The Coordinating Committee to Aid Ukraine created the Foundation in Support of Diplomatic Missions of Ukraine in April. The foundation, registered with the Justice Department as an agent of a foreign government, was established to raise funds for the purchase of buildings to house Ukraine's Embassy in the U.S. and its Mission to the United Nations, in addition to diplomatic residences, furnishings, automobiles and libraries. By the end of the year the foundation had raised $550,000.

The CCAU also coordinated a textbook project for school children in Ukraine. The 80-member Ukrainian Seniors Society of Miami donated $250,000; the Thoughts of Faith mission donated $100,000; the Ukrainian National Association gave $50,000; and the CCAU raised $50,000. The colorful Ukrainian-language books include a primer for beginning readers, reading books for grades 2-4 and a summer reader for primary school students.

Americans for Human Rights in Ukraine devoted much of this year to preparatory work for the Earth Summit in Brazil by organizing press conferences at the United Nations during PrepCom IV and sponsoring two members of Zelenyi Svit to the U.N. and the Earth Summit. AHRU sent a memorandum and Zelenyi Svit reports on the state of ecology in Ukraine and the aftereffects of the Chornobyl disaster to all 175 U.N. members participating in the Earth Summit.

The Philadelphia-based Ukrainian Human Rights Committee in 1992 switched gears to focus on agrarian and economic reform and renamed itself Ukraine Aid. The organization is currently working to create a model farm in the village of Matiushi in the Bila Tserkva region that could later serve as a prototype for privatization. The project's ultimate plan is to give each family in the model farm two hectares of land to farm or sell.

The Canadian Friends of Rukh established a Rukh Peace Corps during the summer, placing volunteers in various government agencies, ministries and organizations in Kiev for a period of six months to a year.

Friends of Rukh of northern New Jersey focused their efforts on funding Ukrainian students' TOEFL tests and providing supplemental financial aid to Ukrainian students studying in the U.S.

Pittsburgh-area Ukrainian Americans organized a medical research mission in the radioactively contaminated towns of Narodychi and Poliske that determined that triple the number of eye abnormalities exist in children living in contaminated areas. Sixteen doctors and technicians from the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh donated their time to travel to Ukraine in November 1991 to examine the children; preliminary results from the research expedition were announced to the community on May 17.

Michigan chapters of the Rotary Club and World Blindness Outreach Inc. sponsored a two-week cataract surgery mission to Kiev in October. The eight-person medical team performed an estimated 150 eye surgeries free of charge. The U.S. team was hosted by the Kiev Rotary Club, chartered on May 9.

Individuals

Lydia Shulakewych, president of the Alberta Branch of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, and Michael Shulakewych, executive director of St. Michael's Extended Care Center in Edmonton, organized a "Na Zdorovia" (To Health) project to fill the world's second largest cargo plane, the Ruslan, with medical supplies and equipment bound for Ukraine in May.

In the spring, Dr. William Green of the Alberta Vocational College launched the Ukraine Project, an English-language book drive to be donated to Ukraine. With the awarding of a $13,000 grant from the Canadian government in November, 40 tons of textbooks and reference material collected for the project will be shipped to Ukraine.

Drs. Jerry Mihaychuk and John Kulick of Parma launched the Dental Relief Project, which will establish "pilot clinics" in Kiev, Lviv, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovske and Chernivtsi. They and eight other American dentists will provide Ukrainian dentists with instruction on Western procedure and use of Western equipment. The two dentists also organized the donation of over 21 tons of dental equipment and supplies which was shipped to Ukraine aboard the Mria in August.

Dr. William Selezinka, an ophthalmologist from Bethesda Eye Institute at St. Louis University School of Medicine, personally delivered 400 pounds of medical supplies and equipment to the University of Ivano-Frankivske Hospital, where he remained for several days to teach the Ukrainian ophthalmologists how to use the supplies.

Yarema Harabatch, a sculptor from Germantown, Md., created a non-profit organization in the U.S. called "UkraineAid" to assist the Bavarian Red Cross in delivering medical equipment to Ukraine.

In October, Roman Melnyk, executive director of Media Operations for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and a long-time member of the Canadian Friends of Rukh executive, arranged for eight television and documentary film workers from Ukraine to work at a Toronto-area CBC newsroom, TV Ontario, Multilingual TV and "Kontakt."

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