LVIV – The first World Forum for Ukrainian Saturday and Sunday Schools took place at Lviv Polytechnic National University on August 17-22. Held under the patronage of Maryna Poroshenko, first lady of Ukraine and chair of the Council of the Petro Poroshenko Charitable Fund and the Ukrainian Cultural Fund, the forum was co-organized by the International Educational Coordinating Council (IECC) of the Ukrainian World Congress.
Participating in the forum were teachers from Ukrainian schools in Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe and North and South America, representing 35 countries, as well as academics and trainers from Ukraine who shared their pedagogical and educational experience with the participants.
Realized within the framework of the Memorandum of Cooperation between the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) and the International Institute for Education, Culture and Diaspora Relations (IIECDR) of Lviv Polytechnic National University, the forum continued a tradition that began over 50 years ago of convening teachers and educators of the diaspora to share knowledge and successes, and to discuss the challenges of teaching the Ukrainian language outside Ukraine.
On August 17, during the official opening of the forum, UWC President Eugene Czolij delivered a video greeting to the numerous delegates and guests, including Ukraine’s first lady, Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine Liliia Hrynevych and the director of the Department for Ukrainians Worldwide and Humanitarian Cooperation of Ukraine, Larysa Dir.
On this day, during the one-day fifth International Conference on “The Ukrainian Language in the World,” held within the framework of the forum, the chair of the UWC’s IECC, Dr. Oksana Wynnyckyj-Yusypovych, delivered a keynote address on the topic “Teaching Ukrainian within State-Mandated Educational Standards and Curriculum Guidelines: A Call to Action.”
In her presentation, she addressed the need to ensure a continuous development of Ukrainian language competency by complying with the language policies of the states where Ukrainian heritage language speakers live around the world.
On August 18-22, during the Creative Ideas Laboratory, presentations and master classes were run by educators-practitioners of Saturday and Sunday schools: Oksana Herych, Oksana Levytska, Ulana Plawu-szczak-Pidzamecky, Ivanna Plakhotnyuk, Nadia Prokopchuk, Tatiana Sunak (all from Canada), Christina Vasylkiv-Pikhmanets (United States), Yuliya Kovalevska-Haugland (Norway) and Halina Barlyak (Italy).
On August 22, the last day of the forum, in her closing remarks Dr. Wynnyckyj-Yusypovych thanked the director of IIECDR, Iryna Kluchkovska, and the entire IIECDR team for their tremendous organizational effort in preparing and running the forum, after which forum participants presented them with flowers and sang “Mnohaya Lita.”
“Teachers of Ukrainian Saturday and Sunday schools who came to Lviv from various corners of the world live and teach in different language and cultural environments. They are specifically united by the fact that once a week they work with children and students whose parents send them to Ukrainian schools. The forum offered these particular teachers an opportunity to meet, and develop personal and professional contacts. In today’s networked world, this is a powerful force and foundation for the development of our worldwide communities,” commented Dr. Wynnyckyj-Yusypovych.