The
atmosphere of today’s meeting was created by the active club member Nastya Burova.
She took a lot of effort, time and creativity to carve a genuine Halloween artifact
- a Jack-o-Lantern. Nastiya’s first experience in pumpkin carving turned
out to be so successful that we decided to use it as a centerpiece for the
round- table discussion. The lantern impressed all the visitors and became a
popular object for taking photographs.
The actual
topic of today’s ESC session was “Peace Corp. Volunteerism in Ukraine”. The guest
presenter was Mr. Patrick Kelly – a friend of the WOA and an experienced Peace
Corp. volunteer.
Patrick
started the lecture with a brief presentation of his background and his home
town – Seattle. The facts about the tourist attractions of Seattle were quite
amusing and evoked a lot of comments and questions.
The facts,
figures and statistics about Peace Corp. Organization were particularly
interesting to the new-comers.
Mr. Kelly
pinpointed the objectives and tasks of Peace Corp. activities in Ukraine. After
that he told the audience about their projects of his host organization in
Dnipropetrovsk and his own main goal – to teach the local Non Government Organizations
(NGOs) the basic fundraising techniques and to shift their activity to finding the
local finance sources for the volunteer projects.
Mr. Kelly
appealed to the audience to help him in his community projects and received
several offers and ideas for the joined activities for the young people in
Dnipropetrovsk. There were many questions asked about the current experience of
the Peace Corp volunteers in Ukraine.
Among the
new visitors of the WOA was Mr. Matt – an ex- Peace Corp volunteer from the
ex-Soviet republic Kazakhstan and an English teacher at a local language school.
He shared his experiences of the life in the central Asian republic.
Once the
official presentation was over the Head of the WOA Svitlana Usenko informed the
club members about the article in the local government newspaper (circulation of 70,500 copies).
The title
of the article was “America is closer than it seems” and it presented the
history and the current activities of the “Window on America” in
Dnipropetrovsk. Our American friends Patrick and Samantha who found their
photos in the Ukrainian newspaper were genuinely impressed and received a
photocopy of the article each.
The Halloween
artifact on the table prompted numerous questions about the Halloween
traditions from the clubmembers. Samantha and Patrick added a few funny facts
to our knowledge about this holiday.
The younger
generation of the club members needed more time to share the impressions from
the session and arranged a Halloween tea ceremony around the Jack-o-Lantern.
Nastya B. followed the tradition and treated her fellows with an assortment of
candies.
The number of participants – 31 persons.
Федченко А. Америка ближче, ніж здається // Вісті Придніпров'я: Обл. суспільно-політична газета (тираж 70 500 прим). - 2011. - 27 жовтня. - С.9.
