YTNF :: SVITUkraine

On a nice autumn day of October 8th SVIT PMT members and some volunteers met in Kharkov to discuss completed activities in Ukraine, project development in general, and make plans for the future. We started with memories, what has happened from the beginning of the project, who did what and went where, how it was and what happened afterwards. The purpose was not just to refresh some nice memories, but also to get new volunteers informed and familiar with the project through the international glasses.

We had brainstorm session on our PMTs and topics to work on, and after trying and cutting came to the following:

human rights education, including environment, gender and HIV/AIDS
socially disadvantaged, with focus on children
ethnic minorities and fight against racism and xenophobia

We have evaluated our communication, which is mostly happening via email list.

And discussed our future steps, including follow-up from the completed activities and new events and projects. As first next coming is General Assembly of SVIT 2006, where PMT members will run working groups on project themes. Besides talking, we had some eating part too, with vareniki, pelmeni and obligatory smetana (sour cream), to
get new energy for everything nice to follow.

Thursday 21 September 2006 A few days after my adventure with ants and lightening came to an end, I left the Crimea and travelled by bus to a small provincial city in the Ukraine called Berdyansk. There I took part in a two week project aimed at educating young people about gender issues. I was one of a number of volunteers, from the UK, USA, Northern Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland and Italy. We stayed in a camp together next to the Sea of Azov and visited a number of local universities and schools and prepared workshops and led discussions about gender issues in the Ukraine and elsewhere. I found myself doing things that I thought I would never do, like facilitating presentations, and speaking to classes full of Ukrainian students. Details...