PUSHCHA-VODYTSIA, Ukraine – Although it was graduation day, there were still four more topical discussions taking place at the Ukrainian Leadership Academy (ULA) on June 23.
The 182 soon-to-be graduates got to choose from concurrent sessions on entrepreneurship, education, local governance or health care under the overarching concept of society’s challenges.
If it was a testament that learning is a continuous process, then the talks revealed that every societal system has its own set of limitations and advantages. They also showed the depth of knowledge that the 10-month program offers to students at five campuses across the country: Kharkiv, Kyiv, Lviv, Mykolayiv and Poltava.
Meant to be a gap year, the immersion “drastically changes” the 16-20 year olds who attend the program, said Jaroslawa Johnson, president and CEO of the Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF), which partially funds and runs the academy.
“They come in as high school students and come out almost as young adults,” she said, adding that the fund has allocated $9 million to date. “We focus on ethics, we focus on liberal arts, which isn’t generally taught in Ukraine. We focus on local culture and history.”
In its third year with 415 graduates from all 25 regions of Ukraine, the ULA is modeled after the Israeli leadership academies called “mechinas” that are designed to prepare the next generation of leaders to serve their country.
Students get to work on social projects and travel in-country as well as abroad to Israel and the European Union, in addition to participating in programs that foster physical, emotional and intellectual development.
Mark Raczkiewycz
Ukrainian Canadian lecturer Lubomyr Chabursky, 54, poses with two graduates of the third class of the Ukrainian Leadership Academy on the Kyiv campus on June 23.
Another aspect is that students attend a campus away from their home region. Thus, a Donetsk native is usually sent to either Kyiv or Lviv, for example. Ms. Johnson calls this “light social engineering,” half-humorously.
The idea is to show that Ukraine “is really one country… so we mix the kids up, we mix the religions up…at the end they all know each other… What we found happening is that the kids from the east appreciate that this is one country and that the Dnipro River isn’t the dividing line,” Ms. Johnson said.
But only the most qualified students get chosen during a vigorous selection process. There are currently 14 applicants for each spot in the 2018-2019 class.
Another goal is to “stem the outflow” of Ukrainians, “the brain drain, because most high school and college students without this program say that, as soon as they graduate, they’re going to leave.,” Ms. Johnson noted.
Luhansk graduate Maria Vysotska, 17, said she wants to stay “to reform and change Ukraine from the inside so that these hostilities don’t happen again,” referring to the Russia-instigated Donbas war that displaced her.
Now living in the Luhansk Oblast city of Severodonetsk, the graduate of the ULA’s third class said that she “found harmony with myself” while attending the academy on the Lviv campus.
She noted that each program component is “valued equally” and after 10 months she “opened for myself Ukrainian language and identity.” Eventually, she wants to enter politics or the diplomatic corps after earning a bachelor’s degree at home and a master’s abroad.
Some graduates start making a difference immediately, even while studying at a university.
Kyiv-native Anna Beloshapka, 19, was part of the second ULA class and did her tenure in Poltava. There, she discovered that “people power can change a country or the world.”
After enrolling at the National University of Life and Environmental Science majoring in international relations, she formed a team to help people with physical disabilities. She won a $1,730 grant and started working on a project to create “inclusive space” that is accessible for disabled people to “break borders and change the way people speak about and act toward them.”
Still looking for a place to rent, her plan is to have a library for the elderly, where others could learn how to use a computer, to educate themselves and where parents can work while their children are under supervision.
Seeing the students grow before his eyes is Ukrainian Canadian Lubomyr Chabursky, 54, of Ottawa.
He gave a series of lectures and discussions to this year’s class on topics related to career development and relationships based on his experience as a litigation lawyer and expert witness combined with the latest literature and TED Talks.
He said the group’s absorption rate and comprehension level “is very impressive and quite amazing… I want to do this for the next 20-30 years.”
Mr. Chabursky said his talks are designed to prepare the students to face challenges, overcome failure and adapt to change “whether or not they’ll become leaders.”
He continued: “I want to give them the skills and tools that they could put into action and effect now and over the next 10-20 years as they decide how they are going to be in married life and bounce back from failures.”
Diaspora program
The next class will be joined by foreigners of Ukrainian descent, including Mr. Chabursky’s 20-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son.
He compared the future experience to being “effectively embedded like journalists attached to military units; they’re going to bring a Western perspective to the table” during projects, discussions and will add “another dimension and… create a connection, a network between them.”
Started in April, the diaspora program already has applicants from Canada, Poland and Thailand for the upcoming 2018-2019 class.
The added dimension will allow both sides to mutually grow and the diaspora members “to become an active member of the change-making sphere in Ukraine, to make a long-term impact,” said diaspora partnership manager Marta Sydoryak.
She added that applicants must pay their way, but that in-country expenses will be covered by the ULA.
Diaspora members will “also learn more about culture and history than they learned in [weekly] Ukrainian school,” added Ms. Johnson. “They’ll see how Ukraine is developing. Parents who see their children are losing that connection [with Ukraine] will see that established again.”
Changing the system
If anybody echoed the words of St. Ignatius of Loyola to “go forth and set the world on fire,” it was singer, musician and ULA initiative working group member Svyatoslav Vakarchuk.
During the graduation ceremony on June 23 he called on the students to “change the system” in Ukraine.
He said they should be “pursuers of dishonesty, pursuers of irresponsibility, pursuers of corruption, pursuers of the archaic desire to hold on to all bad things,” adding that the graduates “should take the place of those” who preserve the current system.
Graduate Ms. Vysotska of Luhansk Oblast said she won’t wait “until I am 30 years old, like some other people” to strive for change, but wants to “start now, when I’m 17 years old.”