NEWS AND VIEWS: How can we best help Ukraine's intelligentsia? (02/14/99)

NEWS AND VIEWS

How can we best help Ukraine's intelligentsia?

by Marko Stech

It was with mixed feelings that I read the article "Let Us Help Ukraine's Intelligentsia" published in the December 13, 1998, issue of The Weekly and signed by the Coordinating Committee to Aid Ukraine. On the one hand, I was glad that someone wishes to provide aid to Ukraine's intellectuals, many of whom live in truly difficult conditions and cannot productively contribute to the process of Ukraine's cultural development. I feel strongly about this issue and believe that the question of whether Ukraine is able to develop a truly patriotic and highly professional intelligentsia will decide the nation's fate. On the other hand, the plan suggested by the committee left me with the impression that this project may follow in the footsteps of similar campaigns to aid Ukraine that were undertaken in the past and produced only minimal, short-term results.

There is a number of logistical problems associated with the plan to distribute stipends to the "most deserving and needy candidates" that immediately come to mind of anyone who has worked on an efficient implementation of a charitable project.

First, there is the selection problem of who are the "most deserving candidates." The appeal mentions "verified lists," but does not specify how these lists have been compiled and verified. This is an important consideration if we want to make sure that (unlike in several instances in the past) the diaspora's aid will be distributed fairly and will actually get to the people who deserve and desperately need it.

Second, the program's wide scope will make it difficult for the organizers to produce concrete lasting results. We must realize that all of the diaspora's resources would not be sufficient to help all those who need help in Ukraine, and while it may seem unfair to single out one professional group over another, this kind of focus is the only way to ensure the program's efficiency. It is much better to successfully accomplish a small undertaking than to fail in a big one.

In addition, the adverse consequences of the lack of focus of many Ukrainian charitable projects include prohibitively high administration costs that eat up far too much of the donors' money. In some cases in the past, more donated money was spent on travel and administration than on the actual charitable work. This should never happen with proper professional management.

However, there are even more important considerations that touch upon general flaws of the diaspora's campaigns to aid Ukraine. These flaws almost always stem from the lack of a long-term vision and professional planning. In this particular case, one quickly realizes that the stipends for the "most deserving candidates" (even if such individuals are correctly identified) are going to help them only temporarily, while the underlying causes of the crisis will remain unaddressed. Soon another fund-raising campaign will be necessary to feed and clothe the same group of intellectuals, and soon afterwards another, and so on.

Also, this kind of a short-term financial aid will not help Ukraine's intelligentsia overcome one of its most serious psychological handicaps: the notion that they cannot help themselves, but must be supported by someone else, be it the state, the ruling party, or the "rich cousins" from the diaspora. In fact, I believe that it would be one of the diaspora's greatest contributions to Ukraine if we could constructively help Ukraine's intelligentsia battle and overcome this living remnant of the totalitarian slave mentality.

So how can Ukraine's intellectuals be helped in a constructive way? First, they should not be made to feel like beggars who depend on fairly arbitrary hand-outs and who must make friends with the "right" people in order to be included in their "verified lists." If we truly want to contribute to the development of Ukrainian culture, we should provide help to Ukraine's intellectuals not in the form of "alms," but as grants for concrete scholarly, creative, or scientific projects.

Second and very important, our help should be directed in such a way so as to create a professional environment in which these intellectuals would have a chance to earn their living on a more regular basis. Our help should address not only the results of the crisis, but its causes as well, that is, it should simultaneously support the infrastructure of Ukrainian cultural and scholarly institutions.

I will suggest only one of the many possible mechanisms of implementing such a project. There currently exist several very good Ukrainian-language literary/scholarly journals in Ukraine, such as Krytyka, Suchasnist, Kyivska Starovyna, Kurier Kryvbasu, Khronika 2000, Svito-vyd, Berezil and others. Most of these journals experience financial difficulties and often have no money to pay their own editorial staff, not to mention their authors. At the same time, they are always in need of well-written literary and scholarly works.

The program to help Ukraine's intellectuals could be set up in such a way that a grant from a sponsor in the diaspora would pay for, let's say, an essay or a short story by a scholar or writer who is in desperate need of financial help. Subsequently, this work would be published in one of the "deserving" journals and its publication could, in fact, be dedicated to the sponsor. In this way, the author would receive financial help (but not in the form of alms) and get more exposure for his work; the journal would receive material that it needs, without depleting its finances; the sponsor would receive recognition for his/her generosity; and, very importantly, a new work would be published to enrich Ukraine's contemporary intellectual culture.

Moreover, in time, when the financial situation of the journal becomes more stable, the journal will be able to pay the author for his/her next contributions, thus giving him/her the opportunity to earn some income. And although we cannot predict when this process would become independent of external financial help, the diaspora's contribution would definitely help to move things in the right direction.

Would not such a mechanism be better than giving out stipends that offer only short-term help and produce no lasting change? Apart from bringing concrete results, it would also naturally determine who is a "deserving" (that is publishable) writer/scholar/translator. And perhaps most importantly, it would give Ukraine's "deserving" intellectuals a chance to accept help with dignity and to "repay" with their creative work.

I would like to stress that my criticism aims at constructive solutions. It is not directed against this particular project, but against general flaws of our campaigns to aid Ukraine. I do not question the committee members' (none of whom is named in the appeal) good intentions. Also, I have no doubt that the cause they promote is an important one. However, in the current state of our community, it is no longer enough to have a good cause and good intentions. One must also have a viable long-term plan of action, be able to effectively implement it, and be fully accountable for the received money. We should help Ukraine's intelligentsia, but we must do it in a way that is constructively helpful, cost-effective and fair to our donors.

I am aware that the task of running the program suggested above would not be easy, especially for a volunteer organization which, due to its nature, cannot function on a consistently professional level. My opinion in this matter is based not only on my personal work history, but also on the Jacyk Foundation's decades of experience in setting up self-sustaining educational projects. After all, the principle of "giving one a fishing rod and teaching him to fish," rather than "giving him a fish," is one of the foundation's main principles. The results of our work indicate that this approach is effective. Similarly, nothing less than a well-planned and professionally executed program can do justice to the cause of helping Ukraine's intelligentsia.

In recent years we find more and more statements in the Ukrainian press and at conferences devoted to the diaspora that stress the need for our organizations to become more professional in order to survive. This is particularly true of their charitable projects. But all these statements will remain empty words if we do not start to change our approach to community work today.

There is a common practice applied by government and charitable agencies to hire private firms with expertise in a given field to run certain projects, because they tend to be more effective and efficient. The time has come for Ukrainian organizations to seriously look at the possibility of adopting a similar strategy in the interest of their projects, their donors, and their own survival. Community organizations with their supporters and their fund-raising experience should join forces with smaller specialized professional groups which could plan, execute and report on their charitable programs.

In my opinion, this is the most logical solution, but one which would require that the people involved in community fund-raising put the interest of their projects ahead of their own personal or group interests. Are our organizations ready to take a more professional approach to their work? If not, in the end, it will be the donors (or lack thereof) that will pass judgement on whether the charitable projects run by Ukrainian organizations deserve our community's support.

Dr. Marko Stech is managing director of the Petro Jacyk Educational Foundation. He can be reached at [email protected] or: PJEF, 1260 Eglinton Ave. E., Mississauga, Ontario, L4W 1K8; telephone, (905) 238-0467; fax, (905) 625-8445.

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