A few words with Anna Krawczuk, president of the UNWLA (06/16/96)

A few words with Anna Krawczuk, president of the UNWLA

by Roman Woronowycz

Q: What do you see as the future of the Ukrainian National Women's League of America in view of declining membership in the organization?

A: The very first thing we did that we hope will increase our membership is elect an ecology chair. This has to do not only with Chornobyl, but also with the global environment. The enthusiasm was great, and a professional in that field was elected, Marta Jarosewich.

The second thing is that we are computerizing and will be going on the Internet, the World Wide Web and any way we can to reach young women. We realize that is where they are. Some of them write to us. We are planning already, we are researching. We have bought two computers already. We have a professional person doing our World Wide Web home page design. We are probably even going to redesign our logo.

We hope that [we can reach them there] because we have found that young women are no longer around the church. This is our reality today, I'm sorry to say. In prior years everybody gathered around the church, Orthodox, Catholic or other churches, and that is where you could reach them. You could reach them in the Ukrainian schools. Today there are very few Ukrainian schools left. So our hope is the Internet.

Q: What about women coming here from Ukraine?

A: Yes, we are trying to get them involved and have them become our members. They are very helpful to us, especially when it comes to the Ukrainian language. Our problem is that anybody who reads and writes grammatically in the live language of Ukraine, we benefit from that, but the language we speak our forefathers brought - our mothers and grandparents - which is not the actual language used in Ukraine itself. Here I mean the literary language, today's language.

We have a woman from Ukraine, one in Arizona, who is a secretary for the branch. Everybody there is very happy because she does all the writing and she is in this way learning English.

Women from Ukraine are not used to organized women's life. They just started to organize in the last five years. So, for them it is a strange thing to see that women want to be separate from men. But they're coming along.

Our editor (of Our Life) is from Ukraine, Iryna Chaban. We have other women from Ukraine, too, although I don't know all their names, but we do have them, and we want them to come and join us. I think all our actions are geared with eyes and hearts to Ukraine.

Q: What do you see as the important issues and projects for the UNWLA in the near term, by which I mean in the next three years?

A: Well, the main project is ecology, because it has to do with Chornobyl and nuclear disaster and the environment. We do give medical aid to Chornobyl victims, and everything else, but I think that we need to make our membership aware of what it is and why it is, and then also inform the people around us, the American community to which we belong, so that they would know why we care so much, why it is so important to us. The Chornobyl tragedy is not over, and it is not going to be over for many years. People have to be educated.

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