EDITORIAL: One hundred eight (02/17/02)

EDITORIAL

One hundred eight

One hundred eight years ago, the Ukrainian National Association, the oldest and largest fraternal-benefit insurance society in the world, was established in Shamokin, Pa. But it's never been just an insurance company.

The UNA was the first organization to unite Ukrainian immigrants in the United States and strengthen their national consciousness - both as Ukrainians and as Americans. It was a pioneer also in Canada, where the UNA began its activity in 1904. The UNA has an illustrious history as a facilitator of community projects and a leader of community causes - ready to take the lead, and the responsibility and effort that come with it, in myriad endeavors.

Such endeavors in the recent past included leading the campaign to erect the Shevchenko Monument in Washington, defending the Ukrainian name in the case of "The Ugly Face of Freedom" aired by CBS, and financially supporting the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine. Nor should the UNA's significant role as publisher of two newspapers, Svoboda and The Ukrainian Weekly, which are key to our community's well-being, or its funding of our Kyiv Press Bureau, which has provided reliable and untainted news from Ukraine for more than 11 years, be taken for granted. These are priceless contributions from which all segments of our community have benefited.

Of course, many know the UNA also as the owner of Soyuzivka, still a favorite with the younger generations as hundreds flock to the resort for Labor Day weekend for the annual end-of-summer ritual of seeing their friends before heading off to school. As one Soyuzivka-goer put it: "There's a kind of continuous friendship here that you'll find nowhere else ... It's something our grandparents had and passed on to our parents, who have passed it on to us. And we'll carry it on."

Another hallmark of the UNA's fraternal activity, the UNA Scholarship Program, since 1946 has awarded approximately $1.8 million to Ukrainian American and Ukrainian Canadian youths pursuing their studies on the university level.

The UNA has also attempted to help Ukraine's youths. Last year the UNA gave 10 disadvantaged rural youths a chance at a college education at one of Ukraine's most prestigious academic institutions - the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy. Through its Ukrainian National Foundation, the UNA paid the $1,000 tuition for each of five boys and five girls from villages in central and eastern Ukraine to take part in college preparatory courses at the university that were aimed at helping them pass the school's rigorous entrance examination.

Throughout its 108-year-old history the UNA has lived up to the founding ideals set down by its pioneers. In recent years those lofty founding principles were capsulized in a modern-day Mission Statement: "The Ukrainian National Association exists: to promote the principles of fraternalism; to preserve the Ukrainian, Ukrainian American, and Ukrainian Canadian heritage and culture; and to provide quality financial services and products to its members. As a fraternal insurance society the Ukrainian National Association reinvests its earnings for the benefit of its members and the Ukrainian community."

Clearly then, the UNA is an organization with both a proud history and a promising future - an organization of all Ukrainians worth supporting with your membership.

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