United Ukrainian American Relief Committee aims its quick-response efforts at grassroots (08/18/02)

United Ukrainian American Relief Committee aims its quick-response efforts at grassroots

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - The United Ukrainian American Relief Committee does not have any large or extensive programs in Ukraine. It has not developed an economic reform program or a democracy development initiative for turning Ukraine westward, expansive and expensive projects that other foreign non-governmental agencies have undertaken because funding organizations and governments are eager to provide the money, much of which can then be used to pay high salaries and cover internal costs. The financial morsels then thrown at Ukraine too often end up in the wrong hands anyway.

The UUARC has found its niche away from the crowded field and has positioned itself for mobility and quick response. Its efforts are directed at the individual and small groups with specific needs and requests. The UUARC attempts to get right down to the grassroots in Ukraine and give aid in a very concrete way.

"We try to help needy people," is the succint description of the UUARC's mission given by Larissa Kyj, president.

It does this through its two representatives in Ukraine, one in Lviv and another one in Kyiv, who pass along requests from individuals, while also coordinating the several ongoing projects the NGO has developed here, including support for orphanages, summer children's camps, a grandmother/grandfather aid program, a soup kitchen in Lviv, and assistance to schools and medical facilities in general.

It also helps in disaster relief - which is considered its primary mandate. In 1999 it donated $60,000 in humanitarian relief to Transcarpathian flood victims and in 2000 it extended another $30,000 to the families of the 80 victims of the Barakova mine disaster in Krasnodon.

The simplicity and minimalism involved in its Ukrainian operation also allows it to address and react to specific requests from individuals and families strapped for cash and facing unexpected tragedies, such as a funeral or a medical operation.

"We just get so many different types of requests," said Dr. Kyi, who explained that her two representatives, Andrii Duda in Lviv and Vira Prynko in Kyiv, sort through the appeals and investigate the circumstances before making recommendations.

Ms. Kyj said her agency received 378 requests last year, half of which were approved by the standing committee in Philadelphia that oversees aid donations. The average donation was $500.

"Sometimes it is simply difficult not to help," added Dr. Kyi.

The UUARC president said she has even received letters written on behalf of entire villages asking for help in specific projects, including several that have asked for aid in building churches, which the UUARC has referred to the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church.

The UUARC is a Philadelphia-based organization begun in 1944, during World War II, by the Ukrainian émigré community of the United States to help with war relief for Ukraine. In the 58 years of its existence, the UUARC has shifted its accent to fill various needs of the Ukrainian nation, in country and abroad.

In the post-war years it helped resettle thousands of displaced persons from camps in Germany and fought to stop forced Soviet repatriation of Ukrainians. In the 1960s it provided humanitarian relief to Ukrainians living in Yugoslavia after a massive earthquake shook the country. In the 1970s it turned to helping political dissidents in the Soviet Union and their families, aid that also was extended to Poland and political refugees living there. Then in 1985 it began a land-purchasing program for poor Ukrainians living in Brazil.

Since Ukraine's independence, the organization has increasingly directed its efforts toward that country. Last year it collected some $900,000 from various sources in the United States for aid to Ukrainians across the globe - 90 percent of which went to the Ukrainian homeland. The UUARC was officially registered as an NGO in Ukraine in 1993.

Strikingly, and most important to donors, only 9 percent of UUARC resources go to administrative costs, which put it near the very top of a recent U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) report on the efficiency of NGO expenditures in Ukraine. In comparison, some large multinational NGOs spend well over 50 percent of their resources on administrative costs.

Perhaps the UUARC's greatest commitment is to Ukraine's orphanages. Its first foray into Ukraine came with a $475,000 USAID grant for developing machine shops for skills development for children living at 13 orphanages. This year the agency has decided to help five orphanages, located in Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Chernivtsi and Kyiv, modernize their sanitary facilities. This may seem like a minor matter to some, but while Ukraine's orphanages, though still under-funded, at least have the minimum requirements of food and clothing, their infrastructures - buildings, plumbing, electricity and the like continue to disintegrate because these are secondary considerations at governmental budget time.

The UUARC also helps the orphanages, as well as hospitals and specific Ukrainian organizations, such as the Shevchenko Scientific Society and the Ukrainian Women's League, with shipments of clothing, medical supplies and books. This year already five such containers of aid have been sent. The shipments are distributed according to where the need seems most acute. It can also be directed to support individual requests.

The UUARC funds summer camps for children in orphanages and orphans living with relatives as well. Earlier this summer Mr. Duda sent 130 kids from western Ukraine for relaxation and special treatment for ailments and illnesses at special camps in the Carpathian Mountains and on the Black Sea coast in Odesa. Meanwhile, another 90 kids from Ukraine's eastern oblasts are currently at camps in Crimea. The cost to the UUARC: about $15,000.

There are camps run by Plast and SUM that the UUARC supports in order to promote the development of Ukrainian consciousness. In addition, the charitable organization coordinates a twice-annual cultural awareness program called "Get to Know Your Country" (Piznai Svii Krai). At Christmas and Easter, some schoolchildren in the more Russified eastern and southern parts of Ukraine are invited to spend the holidays with families in the western oblasts, where Ukrainian cultural and religious traditions are deeper and more keenly observed. Up to 150 kids annually make the trek at a cost to the UUARC of about $10,000.

"The letters we get afterwards are incredible," explained Mrs. Prynko, the Kyiv coordinator. "One child wrote that she had never known that young people attended church because in the Crimea only grandmothers do."

Nor has the organization forgotten Ukraine's elderly. It runs an "Adopt a Grandparent" program that identifies needy elderly persons and supports them with monthly stipends of $15 a month, which does not cover all a pensioner's needs but in many cases nearly doubles their monthly income. Currently 130 elderly individuals receive aid, most of them former dissidents and repressed individuals, as well as people forced to migrate for political reasons under the Soviet regime.

The grandparents project is related to a similar program in which relatives of deceased dissidents are given financial support. Twenty-two people, including Vasyl Symonenko's mother and Yurii Lytvyn's mother, have received $20 a month since the program's inception nine years ago. Liuba Franko, the granddaughter of the renowned poet and writer Ivan Franko, also benefits from the aid.

In Lviv the UUARC funds a "Holodna Kukhnia" (hungry kitchen), which feeds 25 adults and five children once a day, five times a week. Those who participate are allowed a meal a day at designated cafeterias in the city, which the Philadelphia organization then reimburses.

Finally, looking at the success of its Brazilian land purchase initiative, which in the 1980s helped poor Brazilians of Ukrainian ancestry purchase land, the UUARC has begun a similar effort in Ukraine to help finance the purchase of farm machinery for Ukrainian farmers and to extend loans to assist them in beginning agricultural projects. The first loan of $10,000 was recently extended for the development of a pig farm in western Ukraine.

While many Ukrainians from across the world contribute to the UUARC fund with individual donations, Ukrainian American-owned credit unions and banks in the United States today provide a large percentage of the funding.

Individual benefactors also have helped the UUARC to develop specific projects, sometimes with extensive donations.

One such philanthropist is Hryhorii Malynowsky, who lives near Detroit. He has sponsored a project that has provided financing to thus far purchase 300 risographs for learning institutions throughout Ukraine at a cost of about $3,000 per unit. A risograph is a type of copying machine that can copy textbooks and manuals speedily and effectively.

Mr. Malynowsky has been one of the UUARC's biggest individual contributors and has supported efforts in Ukraine since the organization entered the country nine years ago. In addition to the copy machines, Mr. Malynowsky has given money to purchase encyclopedias, dictionaries, textbooks and professional technical manuals for schools, universities, medical institutions and museums.

The UUARC also has taken advantage of the Petrach Fund of Washington, which gave $90,000 to build an elementary school and a sports facility in the village of Dobrodukhiv in the Lviv Oblast. The balance of the unspent money was used to develop a computer lab for students in the county and purchase ambulances for the county hospital.

There is also Sylvia Blake, another person from the Detroit area who directed in a will she wrote in the 1980s that except for $50,000 to be given to five other organizations, the balance of her estate should be divided equally between the UUARC and St. Mary Protectress Orthodox Church in Detroit. At about the same time she began playing the stock market and made a fortune. Ms. Blake died in 2000 and the UUARC has received $600,000 from the estate. Plans call for the funds to be dedicated to supporting Ukraine's impoverished medical sector, especially at the village level where medical clinics are desperately needed.

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