NEWS AND VIEWS: How a small contribution made a large difference in Ukraine (07/18/99)

NEWS AND VIEWS

How a small contribution made a large difference in Ukraine

by Stephanie Richard
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

MYRHOROD, Ukraine - As an American TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Peace Corps volunteer, I am a recent arrival to Ukraine. However, I have already grown accustomed to the constant shortages of supplies and materials that is an everyday reality for the people here. Currently, with the growing economic crisis, things are only getting worse.

The best way to explain my experience of living in this country is "double culture shock." On the surface many things look very Westernized, but they do not in fact work this way. We have faucets, but no water comes out; we have light switches, but there is never any power (electricity and water are highly rationed). People work eight hours a day, but cannot feed their families because they are paid only once every three or four months. In a country where education is highly valued, schools have no textbooks, and those books they do have contain hopelessly outdated information.

Accordingly, throughout my three-month training with the Peace Corps, I was prepared to teach in a Ukrainian classroom with little or no resources. You can imagine my surprise then when I arrived in Myrhorod for the first time, a town of only 47,000 people, and while stepping into my new classroom found that it would be the envy of many American teachers. My walls are lined with new and contemporary books, there is a television/VCR, and an up to-date sound system. Standing in the corner is a beautiful new photocopying machine. I have yet to see so many English resource materials anywhere else in Ukraine.

I soon learned that the materials in this room are part of an ongoing project sponsored by Siena College and Americans for Democracy in Ukraine, and that I, as the first native English speaker to live in Myrhorod, was the newest resource of center. The amazing materials in my room are actually shared with nine other schools in Myrhorod, and the English Resource Center has just come into existence this year after an extensive teacher training seminar hosted by teachers from Siena College in Albany, N.Y., in the summer of 1998.

I have found the center to be an invaluable resource as I try to share American culture and values, as well as English language with my students. In turn, as Ukraine struggles to join the world economy, I know the knowledge I impart to my students is equally invaluable. For the teachers of Myrhorod, the center is simply a treasure beyond compare. It has allowed them to revolutionize their teaching methodology and take a far more creative approach to their lessons.

Not only has this wonderful center made my job and that of others here in Ukraine 100 times easier, it is living proof that a few committed individuals can really make a difference in the life of both the students and the teachers of a whole community.

To donate to this valuable project, please contact: Lydia Tarnawsky, Siena College, Department of Modern Languages, 515 Loudon Road, Loudonville, NY, 12211-1462.

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