Ukrainian civic activists find U.S. program focusing on women highly valuable (01/04/04)

Ukrainian civic activists find U.S. program focusing on women highly valuable

by Yaro Bihun

WASHINGTON - Organizing and running civic organizations in Ukraine, a society that for most of the last century relied solely on the government and official organizations to care for its needs, is not an easy task. And if these new groups focus on the needs of women - long ignored by the old Soviet government as well as the government that followed - the task is that much more difficult.

Twelve resolute Ukrainian women activists who have taken on that challenge recently spent ten days here (Dec. 10-20), participating in a U.S. Government-funded training program organized by the Open World Leadership Center and the Vital Voices Global Leadership Institute. They met with American women leaders who confront the same problems they face in Ukraine as well as with government, civic and business leaders.

The goal of the program was to introduce the women activists from Ukraine to the way their U.S. counterparts work and interact with the government and other segments of society. Judging by their comments to The Ukrainian Weekly on the eve of their departure, they were returning home buoyed by the experience and full of new ideas about how to improve their work.

Nataliya Savchenko, who runs a women's crisis prevention program and heads a women's credit union in Donetsk, was impressed with the interaction she found between the government and civic organizations in the United States. "We saw how this close cooperation can work," she said. "And we can put this new experience to good use in Ukraine."

Larysa Varenyk, who is deputy director of the Kyiv City Center for Women, also noted how the U.S. government and non-government sectors work together in this area. "This experience, for the most part, is lacking in Ukraine, although some of it can be found, to an extent, in Kyiv," she said.

The United States has extensive experience in dealing with both domestic abusers and the abused, Ms. Varenyk said, and she would like to organize U.S.-based training programs on dealing with abuse cases for Kyiv city prosecutors, police and victim caseworkers.

Valentyna Kyrylova, director of the Osnova Publishing House in Kyiv, expressed her surprise and appreciation for the high level of meetings they had in Washington.

"The openness and respect with which we were received by these high officials impressed me the most," she said, "because it is difficult to imagine that such high officials - as Ambassador (Carlos) Pascual and Ambassador (Steven) Pifer - in Ukraine would interact with people like us, that is, representatives of non-governmental organizations, so openly and respectfully. It's really very hard to imagine."

In addition to the two officials mentioned by Ms. Kyrylova - both former U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine who now hold high State Department positions dealing with Europe and Eurasia - the group's other meetings with official Washington included Justice Department experts on women's abuse and trafficking issues and staff members of Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, who co-chairs the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus.

The majority of their program, however, included such activities as visits to a house for abused women and children and a woman-owned business, and meetings with experts on networking, lobbying, media relations and political action, such as Emily's List, which helps women attain elective office.

The work of Emily's List received high praise from Lyudmyla Merlyan, who heads the Gender Committee of the Civil Parliament of Ukrainian Women and the International Committee for Human Rights in Kyiv, and Oryslava Vasylyk, coordinator of training programs of the Civil Initiatives for Domestic Violence and Prevention of Human Trafficking in Lviv.

"I would very much like to learn from their experience and share it with Ukraine," Ms. Merlyan said. "Especially useful for me was to see democracy in action, exercising its influence on the government, and the role of society in the decision-making process of government." Ms. Vasylyk said she was also attracted to the idea of self-financing of civic organizations through fundraising.

Olena Morhun, coordinator of crisis prevention programs of the Woman For Woman center in Dnipropetrovsk, said it was very important for her to see how American organizations fight against trafficking and domestic violence. "The important thing about this program is that it will bring about change - change in the participants personally - and that it will serve as a stimulus for greater effort in Ukraine," she said.

A number of participants spoke about the program's benefit of bringing the Ukrainian participants together. Before this, even though many of them work in the same or related fields, they never had a chance to meet to share their experiences and ideas.

"I was impressed with the members of the group with which I worked over the past ten days because I realized their immense potential in Ukraine, thanks to the high level of their competence and experience," was how Ms. Kyrylova assessed this aspect of the program. "It is very important that we met in this group from Ukraine, and I expect that we will continue our work there together," she added.

Indeed, as Oleksandra Sorokopud, executive director Natalia Kobrynska Youth Gender Center in Lviv, and some of her colleagues noted, the group decided to form a coalition, especially of women's organizations, that would network and enable them to combine their forces when a concerted effort was needed. Vital Voices Chair Melanne Verveer noted that during his meeting with the Ukrainian women, Ambassador Pascual, who now serves as the coordinator for U.S. assistance to Europe and Eurasia, said that the United States would be willing to provide assistance to such a coordinating resource center.

Ms. Verveer, a third-generation Ukrainian American who served as the chief of staff for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, said there was a need for more programs, such as the one that brought the 12 women activists to Washington.

"We learned the hard way how to get things done," she said. "They feel that they could benefit a great deal if there was more of that back-and-forth, and if more Americans would go to Ukraine and spend time with them, whether it's on gender issues, trafficking, business development or the law.

"There is a lot of hands-on experience that can be provided," Ms. Verveer said.

The group of 12 women was the first of ten delegations of Ukrainian civic and media leaders scheduled to visit the United States under the revised U.S. Congress-funded Open World Program. Previously, the program was limited to exchanges with Russia.

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