New Westinghouse long-distance telephone service to benefit Ukraine (04/14/96)

New Westinghouse long-distance telephone service to benefit Ukraine

by Roman Woronowycz

NEW YORK - Imagine donating money to help Ukraine every time you dial your telephone - at no extra cost to you.

Under a new program, if you subscribe to the recently initiated Westinghouse Long Distance Telephone Service, 12 percent of your monthly long distance phone bill and 10 percent of international charges will go to a fund marked to aid Ukraine.

This novel approach to fund-raising is the brainchild of Robert Walsh and three friends who are members of the Ukrainian American Veterans Association.

Mr. Walsh is the president of PBJ Enterprises, located in the Wall Street area of New York, an authorized agent for Westinghouse Communications. By agreement with Westinghouse, if a person subscribes to its phone services through PBJ, whether long distance or international, a portion of their monthly bill - 12 percent of long distance charges and 10 percent of international long distance billing - will go to a fund set up by Mr. Walsh.

Overseeing the fund will be a Committee to Aid Ukraine comprising Mr. Walsh, and UAV officials Harold Bochonko, Jerry Nestor and Steve Shewczuk. Every month, as Mr. Walsh explained, he will cut a check from revenues from subscriptions to his "The Ukrainian Phone Service - Aid to Ukraine," which will be handed over to the committee for disbursement.

Mr. Walsh maintained that monthly phone bills will not be jacked up. In fact he guaranteed that he could beat the rates of the other major phone service carriers.

"I would appeal to the conscience of Ukrainian Americans to reach out to Ukraine," said Mr. Walsh. "Nobody is getting rich here, except the people who need your help."

Currently, the board has identified four key projects on which it wishes to concentrate its aid: the UAV's Adopt-A-Hospital program, which has already sent more than $7 million in medical supplies to Ukraine; the Gift of Life program of Rotary International, which brings children who need open-heart surgery to the United States; a new program sponsored by the Orphans Aid Society, in which a $15 donation sponsors an orphaned child in Ukraine for a month; and, finally, a program of instruction for Ukrainian business and political leaders in banking and securities in the U.S.

Mr. Bochonko of the UAV explained that the veterans' group would be the middleman through which the money would flow, and that it would bear responsibility for accountability. "Ultimately it is the UAV's responsibility to make sure the money goes where it is supposed to. The money spent will be accounted for in reports we will ask to be published in the Ukrainian newspapers," he explained.

Mr. Walsh expects "The Ukraine Phone Service - Aid to Ukraine" fund to be working by late May. "I hope that the first disbursement will go to the committee by the second quarter, and our monthly meetings will shift from getting the word out to actually doing it - we need people to let family and friends know how to sign up."

The Securities School

One of the most interesting aspects of what the UAV is trying to do with its program is to bring Ukrainian businesspersons and politicians to the United States to train in securities and banking practices.

Mr. Walsh, who also runs The Securities School, a Wall Street school that teaches how financial markets work and how they interact with banking systems, also has announced that in honor of Ukrainian American war veterans his school will absorb annually 75 percent of the tuition for 20 participants from Ukraine to attend the courses. The attendees will be selected by the UAV to participate in the intensive three-and-a-half week courses from lists drawn up in conjunction with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington. A major requirement for obvious reasons is that the students have fluency in English.

The courses would coordinate meetings between Ukrainian entrepreneurs and politicians and their local and state counterparts in New York, including Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Gov. George Pataki.

It is Mr. Walsh's wish that eventually the program could sustain itself in Ukraine after a core of trainers has been established in what he calls a "train the trainers" program. Here a group will be trained who will then initiate ongoing technical education for businessmen and politicians in Kyiv.

The overriding cost, besides tuition and books, is room and board for the attendees, which Messrs. Bochonko and Walsh estimate at $93,000 for the first 20 students. They hope the money will come from government and business donations and through money generated from subscribers to "The Ukrainian Phone Service - Aid to Ukraine."

"We do not want to ask the Ukrainian people; we want to go to the banks, let's say, the Bank of America, Chase Manhattan," explained Mr. Bochonko. Mr. Walsh said he was looking to have the first group in the United States by the end of the year.

To subscribe to "The Ukrainian Phone Service - Aid to Ukraine" call PBJ Enterprises in Manhattan at (212) 248-9500.

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