Ukraine's regional scouting groups meet in Dnipropetrovsk (06/17/01)

Ukraine's regional scouting groups meet in Dnipropetrovsk

by Oksana Zakydalsky

DNIPROPETROVSK - The Association of Dnipro Scouts, on May 18-20 organized a conference of regional and local scouting groups in Dnipropetrovsk. Participants included representatives from Kerch in Crimea, the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, and the cities of Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava - all organizations registered at the regional level. Other groups from Kharkiv and Odesa, as well as Hungarian scouts from Zakarpattia and Russian scouts from Sevastopil, expressed support for the initiative but could not attend. Representatives from two nationally registered scouting organizations, Plast and Sich, also took part in the conference.

There are three nationally registered scouting organizations in Ukraine today: Plast, Sich and the Association of Scouts of Ukraine (whose membership is made up of regional scouting groups). There are also numerous (no one has made an official count) scouting organizations registered at the oblast or city levels.

There is yet another scouting organization, "Scouts of Ukraine," which has been promoted by the World Scout Bureau as the candidate for membership in World Organization of Scouting Movement (WOSM). However, it has not been registered as a national organization and has no legal status. Adding to this complexity, Plast and Sich, at the end of April registered a national scouting federation under the name "Scouts of Ukraine."

Because attempts to establish a unitarian scouting organization in Ukraine have been unsuccessful, Plast is trying to consolidate the scouting movement around the new federation. A proposal to set up a Coordinating Council made up of regional organizations allied with the federation was the main point of discussion at the Dnipropetrovsk conference. All of the organizations present supported the idea.

An agreement to be signed by each regional organization which agrees to join the Coordinating Council was drawn up and is now being circulated. Nadia Melnychuk, president of Skif, agreed to be the coordinator of this initiative.

The general attitude of the participants at the conference toward the work of the World Scout Bureau in Ukraine was very critical; there was a general feeling of "we won't be pushed around any more."

Informal discussions yielded disturbing information such as the fact that the World Scout Bureau had been making monetary payments to those it wished to influence. For example, two years ago the then president of the organization favored by the bureau received a sum of $15,000 to purchase premises for a Scout Information Center whose purpose was loosely described as "to aid the Ukrainian Scout Movement. " So far, the Information Center has produced no information, and ownership of the premises still remains under the former president's name. The second president was paid a generous honorarium to co-author and edit a Scouting Dictionary (in Russian).

The conference was informed about the First Eurasia Regional Scout Conference which took place in Miensk on May 9-11. The Eurasia Region covers the 12 CIS countries - six of which are already WOSM members: Moldova, Armenia, Tajikistan, Belarus, Georgia and, since October of last year, Russia. Four persons from Ukraine - Oleksander Kuzmenko, Oleksander Vovk, Serhii Kapustin and Svitlana Malukh - were present in Miensk and were introduced as representatives of the scouting movement in Ukraine. (For an explanation of who these people are, see this writer's article in The Ukrainian Weekly, May 20.)

This prompted a question from Sergey Sirotkin of the All-Russia National Scout Organization about whom in Ukraine the guests were representing; his question remained unanswered, however. The uncertainty about the so-called Ukrainian delegation and the situation in Ukraine prompted an announcement by Secretary General Jacques Moreillon, present at the conference, that he would visit Ukraine on June 6-8 and personally size up the situation.

Although the news of the secretary general's visit was welcomed by all the representatives at the Dnipropetrovsk conference, taking into account that Mr. Kuzmenko heads the government-funded Kyiv Youth Social Services and has wide-ranging contacts within the government apparatus, there was some fear that Mr. Moreillon would be shown "Potemkin villages" of scout groups, resources and supporters.

In its May 24 issue, the Kyiv paper Ukraina Moloda published an article about the financing of youth organizations which notes that government funds budgeted for such organizations are under the control of their heads, who divide the money among themselves according to their own agendas and not according to the quality of the programs offered. As a result, the article states, there are organizations composed of "dead souls" - ones which are active only on paper or others which are not even legally registered with the Ministry of Justice. It is not clear to what extent the World Scout Bureau understands how, in Ukraine, supposedly volunteer-based organizations can be manipulated by government structures and, at the same time, government funds redirected to fulfill personal agendas.

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