Plast Ukrainian Scouting Organization celebrates 10th anniversary in Ukraine

by Oksana Zakydalsky

KYIV - Celebrating the 10th anniversary of its revival in Ukraine, Plast Ukrainian Scouting Organization held its sixth general meeting on November 19-21, 1999, for the first time in Kyiv. With over 9,000 members and branches in every oblast, Plast has become the strongest and most respected youth organization in Ukraine.

The general meeting ended the two-year term of office of the National Executive headed by Andrii Harmatii. The main issues in the 1997-1999 period had been regionalization, the gradual shift to Kyiv as the center of national activity and the effort to join the World Organization of the Scouting Movement (WOSM).

Because of the growth in membership and the spread of branches throughout Ukraine, a regional structure was implemented and the following 11 regions were created (their oblasts are shown in brackets): Kyiv; East (Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv); Northeast (Chernihiv, Sumy); North (Rivne, Volyn, Zhytomyr); West (Lviv, Zakarpattia); Carpathian (Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi); Podillia (Ternopil, Vinnytsia, Khmelnytskyi); South (Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kherson); Center (Kirovohrad, Poltava, Cherkasy); and Crimea. Regional councils were set up to aid new and emerging Plast groups on their territory and maintain contact with the National Executive.

In March 1998 a seminar-workshop for regional representatives was held and a comprehensive program of regional training seminars begun, culminating in the publication of a "Plast Regions" handbook. Over 20 branches were created in the East, North and Crimea regions in the last two years period and the growth in national membership was mostly due to these new branches.

The success of the devolution of responsibilities from the center to the regions was evident in the fact that the 103 delegates to the 1999 general meeting came from all regions of Ukraine - about 30 percent of them from eastern and southern Ukraine. (The total number of participants at the meeting, including guests, was 156.)

In order to establish personal contact with personnel of the regions and obtain input on the development of Plast in an all-Ukrainian context, several members of the National Executive undertook a program of visits to the regions, particularly to the east and Crimea. The vice-president responsible for internal affairs estimated that he had travelled 120,000 kilometers during 1998/99.

With Plast achieving a truly national dimension, a gradual shift of its operations center from Lviv to Kyiv was begun with the aim of eventually establishing the national headquarters in Kyiv. The National Executive has opened an office in central Kyiv (just off Independence Square) and a Plast Center at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (thanks to assistance from the Canada-funded Civil Society Project).

In order to acquaint Kyiv with Plast, a Plast Day was held this summer in the capital on Independence Day. In the past, because Plast lacked a solid Kyiv presence, its relations with government agencies had been sporadic and Plast did not take advantage of all the existing opportunities to gain government support. Contacts with government offices will be pursued more aggressively now that the organization is Kyiv-based.

The efforts of Plast to join the WOSM have encountered some rough waters. Besides Plast, there are other, albeit locally based, scouting-type organizations throughout Ukraine. In 1998, on the initiative of Plast, the principles of a federative scouting organization for Ukraine were agreed upon by several such organizations, but this federative structure was not accepted by the World Scout Bureau, which is WOSM's secretariat and can make recommendations on membership.

The bureau claimed that Ukraine apparently lacked ethnic or religious diversity to make a federative organization necessary. Instead, the Scout Bureau encouraged the founding of a new organization, Scouts of Ukraine. This organization had its inaugural conference in May 1999 where 25 delegates represented a membership of 796. Since then the Scout Bureau has been promoting this organization as Ukraine's potential member of the WOSM.

At the Plast general meeting a bombshell relating to WOSM membership was dropped by Boris Skrebtsov, the president of Scouts of Ukraine, who was attending as a guest. He read a statement from WOSM which said that the world body did not consider the constitution of Plast Ukraine to be acceptable for an organization that aspired to WOSM membership. The Plast constitution was said to be "limiting" because it presented the aim of the organization as being self-development within a "patriotic" context.

The WOSM also claimed that the Plast constitution made no reference to scouting or to the principles outlined in the WOSM constitution; hence, its constitution implied that Plast did not consider membership in the world body as essential to its goals. On the other hand, Mr Skrebtsov said, the world body determined that the constitution of Scouts of Ukraine meets the WOSM's requirements for membership.

The Plast Ukraine leadership considers Scouts of Ukraine to be an ephemeral organization, without any stable membership or program; furthermore, it has not yet been registered with the Ukrainian government as a national organization - such registration requires membership in 13 of 25 oblasts).

In its report to the general meeting, the National Executive maintained that the World Scout Bureau, for reasons that are political rather than substantial, does not want Plast to be admitted into WOSM as the scouting organization of Ukraine. In spite of this, Plast is committed to WOSM membership and in the last two years took part in international scouting events such as the European jamborees in Slovakia (1998) and Poland (1999) and the World Jamboree in Chile (1998-1999).

Mr. Harmatii's report to the meeting acknowledged the assistance of Plast diaspora organizations to the revival of the organization in Ukraine. The rapid growth of Plast Ukraine is attributable to diaspora organizations who passed on the Plast ideology, methodology and programs, which had been both preserved and developed by Plast organizations around the world.

"But now the time has come when Plast in Ukraine has to help diaspora Plast organizations maintain an active relationship with their fatherland through the organization of joint events; Ukraine must nurture Plast unity among Ukrainian youth around the world," Mr. Harmatii said. During the past two years such joint events and exchanges were organized with Plast organizations in Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Argentina, Poland and the United States.

Some existing problems were highlighted by Mr Harmatii. As the organization grows in both numbers and territory, the lack of paid professional staff as well as sufficient support staff is becoming more burdensome. There is no stable financial base to make realistic planning possible. The efforts to establish a resource center in Lviv, with a regional network, were derailed a year ago when the Lviv premises were burglarized and all the technical equipment stolen.

The report of the National Council (Kraiova Rada), which summarized and evaluated the work of the organization in the past two years, began with the words: "The period 1998-1999 was marked by the disappearance of confrontational politics within the organization, both on a group and a personal level. Plast remains the strongest scouting organization in Ukraine, the largest youth organization of its type in Ukraine."

The report noted that the increase in membership was due mainly to the emergence of new branches rather than the growth of old ones, which seem to have stabilized with respect to their size. This was largely due to the harsh economic conditions that forced many good and idealistic leaders to leave Plast and devote more time to earning their daily bread.

Commenting on the work of the National Executive, the National Council made the point that the range of responsibilities on the national level was becoming unrealistic. Although, to support the executive, there is a secretariat with an average paid staff of four, in the last two years 14 people had passed through it. According to the National Council, this shows there is a need to develop a greater commitment to the job by giving the staff some decision-making powers.

On another point, the National Council stated that having separate female and male national leadership for the youth and children's branches ("yunatstvo" and "novatstvo") had been counterproductive, as many of the responsibilities overlapped across gender lines, resulting in unnecessary conflicts.

The National Council report concluded that the greatest achievement of Plast in the last 10 years has been leadership training: "It is no exaggeration to say that no other organization in Ukraine has such a large number of volunteers who continuously and, most importantly, with suitable qualifications, work with children and youth. This is indeed a priceless treasure which Plast must continue to support and develop."

The general meeting also revised the Plast Ukraine Constitution partly to adhere to new legal criteria and partly to revamp the organizational structure to meet the needs of a large national organization. In the new constitution, the National Council will set general policy and be the governing body of the organization between general meetings. The National Executive (Kraiova Starshyna) assumes executive and staff functions and is accountable to the National Council. Members of the executive can be salaried staff. A funding committee responsible for financial control has been created. The new constitution also addresses some concerns raised by the World Scout Bureau in that it makes a more direct reference to scouting principles.

The general meeting ended with the election of officers: Levko Zakharchyshyn (Lviv) was elected head of the National Council; Andrii Harmatii (Lviv), head of the National Executive, and Bohdan Heneha (Lviv) chairman of the auditing committee. Several members from the new regions, e.g. Halyna Kashyrina from Crimea and Serhii Lytenko from the Eastern Region, were proposed for national posts but that meant they would have had to give up their regional responsibilities. They chose to stay at their regional positions, where they believe they are most needed at present.

This writer had attended the organizing national conference of Plast in Morshyn in October 1990 (see The Ukrainian Weekly, November 25, 1990). At that time I described Plast as an "organization in an embryonic stage." Nine years later, Plast Ukraine is a major, mature and functioning national organization with a program that has proved to be sustainable, even in the harsh economic conditions of contemporary Ukraine.

In 1990 Plast had not yet reached beyond its traditional western Ukrainian homeland; almost all of the 58 participants at that meeting came from Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil. This time, some of the most active delegates were from the east and the south - among whom were three young Tatar "plastunky" from Crimea.

At the same time, growth has not weakened continuity; many faces were the same as nine years ago: both Mr. Zakharchyshyn and Mr. Heneha had played major roles at Morshyn; the outgoing head of the National Council and member of the new one, Bohdan Hasiuk, had also been among the leaders in Morshyn.

One can conclude that today Plast Ukraine is a well-established organization that is successfully meeting the challenges of both development and stability. It is ready to assume a leading role among Plast organizations around the world and, according to its leadership, is the only scouting organization that deserves to represent Ukraine in the world scout movement.

World scouting: a regional vision for former Soviet countries

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 16, 2000, No. 3, Vol. LXVIII

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