Philadelphia Area Peace Corps Associa!on

SOJOURNERS Summer 2014

Ukraine!has been in the news a lot lately! In this issue of Sojourners, we have two feature ar!cles from RPCVs, sharing their reec!ons on their service and

the current situa!on in Ukraine

Table of Contents

3………..From the President

4………..Meet Your Board Members

6………..”An Awakening in Ukraine”

by Holden Sla"ery (Ukraine ‘10#’13)

8………..”Ukraine’s Hope”

by Edward Riehl (Ukraine ‘06#’08)

11……...Recent Events

12……...Upcoming Events

Interested in wri!ng for the newsle"er?

We’d love to share your stories and photos! Email Ellen at ellen.rhudy@gmail.com with ideas, ques#!ons, or simply to express your interest.

Membership: Join or Renew

A membership in the Na!onal Peace Corps Associa!on (NPCA) en!tles you to membership with your local a$liate group, the Philadelphia Area Peace Corps Associa!on (PAPCA), a subscrip!on to World!View magazine, discounts on travel and merchandise, and access to a number of members#only benets such as the NPCA’s online directory. Your membership supports legisla!ve advocacy, global educa!on, and more.

PAPCA uses your funds to pay for opera!ng costs such as the web#site, email service, newsle"er produc!on, and event costs—all to keep you informed of our ac!vi!es and upcoming events. We o%er monthly dinners and several service ac!vi!es each year. We do#nate to various worthy projects (currently, microloans through KIVA).

To!join!the!NPCA!and!PAPCA!($50/year)!

!" By!check: make check out to NPCA. Include your address, phone number, email, country and years of service, and choose PAPCA as your a$liate group.!(You may add addi!onal a$liate groups, such as “Friends of [Country]” for $15 per group.) Mail your check to:!

Na!onal Peace Corps Associa!on—Membership

1900 L. Street NW, Suite 610

Washington, DC 20036

!" Online: visit h"p://peacecorpsconnect.org/membership

To!join!PAPCA!($15/year)!

!" By!check: make check out to PAPCA. Include your address, phone number, email, country and years of service. Mail your check to:!

Sandy Voge

1939 E. Zabenko Dr.

Wilmington, DE 19808

!" Online: visit h"p://phillyrpcv.com/Membership_Financials.html

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From the President

3

Dear PAPCA members,

One of the things that mo!#vates me to be involved with PAPCA is the community of RPCVs I have met here in the area. I treasure the friendships I made while I served as a Vol#unteer (both Hondurans and other PCVs). Here in Philadel#phia, I now treasure the friendships I’ve created with RPCVs I’ve met here, many of whom I met through PAPCA. My RPCV friends served in di%erent places and at di%er#ent !mes, but we share a common bond of having served in the Peace Corps. My involvement with PAPCA has been instrumental in crea!ng a sense of belonging in the town I now call home.

PAPCA is a volunteer#driven, 100+ member organiza!on whose mission is to promote the third goal of the Peace Corps (to promote a be"er understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans). For more than twenty years, PAPCA has been promo!ng cultural perspec!ves through service, educa!on, and social events in the region. PAPCA’s members span all ve decades of Peace Corps history and our members live in New Jersey, Delaware, the Lehigh Valley, the Main Line, and probably every neighborhood in Philadelphia.

We hope that you join us at our monthly dinners, biannual service events, summer picnic, or our December end#of#year potluck. PAPCA also plans special events with the Peace Corps regional o$ce out of New York City throughout the year. We welcome sugges!ons you may have for PAPCA for future ac!vi!es.

Nos!vemos, as we would say in Honduras...see you soon!

# Kimiko Doherty (Honduras ‘03#’05)

Meet Your Board Members

Kimiko!Doherty!

Honduras ‘03#’05

President Kerry!Coughlin!

Moldova ‘11#’13

Vice President

Roseanne!Rostock!

Philippines ‘00#’02

Secretary

Sandy!Voge!

Nepal ‘90#’92

Treasurer/Membership Chair

Not!pictured:

Jessica!McAtamney!(Guatemala ‘97#’99) # Communica!ons Chair

Meet Your Board Members

Ellen!Rhudy!

Macedonia ‘09#’11

Newsle"er Chair

Jeanne"Marie!Hagan!

Moldova ‘07#’09

Newsle"er Chair

Paula!Larson!

Thailand ‘83#’85

Service Chair Jane!Behnke!

Afghanistan ‘70#’72

Member#at#large

Meg!Baker!

Ghana ‘78#’79

Member#at#large

Huu!Ngo!

Papua New Guinea ‘99#’01

Member#at#large

An Awakening in Ukraine

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Holden Sla"ery (Ukraine ‘10#’13)

Maybe it was because of the locales where I lived there—a village of 2,000 people and a town of 8,000—but I thought Ukraine was a calm and sleepy country where change was rare and poli#!cs rarely a%ected people’s daily lives. That was precisely the problem that countless Ukrainians expressed to me. Sure, corrup!on stunted eco#nomic growth and public money seemed to dis#appear, but it had always been that way. Corrup#!on and inac!on were the status quo. People went about their business and grew crops to feed their families. They found various hustles—selling food items, doing repairs, using their vehi#cles as taxi cabs—to supplement their paltry income and survive.

I lived in Kelmentsi, a town in western Ukraine, where the Ukrainian president at the !me, Victor Yanu#kovych, was enormously unpopular. Many people in my community had rallied together and protested dur#ing the Orange Revolu!on in 2004, largely to keep Yanukovych from securing the presidency in an elec!on deemed unfair. A&er the protests produced a di%erent president, Victor Yushenko, that presidency was characterized by ingh!ng and seen as a failure. And Yanukovych had re#emerged as his successor. These developments disheartened people and formed in them an apathy toward poli!cs. They went about their business, cared for their families, and occasionally lamented on Ukraine’s hopeless poli!cal situa!on.

The mood was such when I arrived in Kelmentsi in 2010 and such when I le& in 2013. My fellow volunteers, our Ukrainian peers, and I agreed that things would change eventually, when the country was led by the young people born in post#Soviet Ukraine. We taught our students and hoped that one day, in the distant future, they would help to reform Ukraine. I met and collaborated with quite a few young idealists who wanted to stay in their homeland and improve it.

I could never have foreseen that public life would change so dras!cally

An Awakening in Ukraine

7

Holden Sla"ery (Ukraine ‘10#’13)

and drama!cally just a few months a&er I le& Ukraine. It began when Yanukovych declined to sign a European Union Associa!on agreement. Protests began in Kyiv, and the president’s response was to criminalize various forms of peaceful protest. That intensied the protests, and violence erupted be#tween authori!es and protestors. When the deaths mounted, all PCVs in the world’s largest Peace Corps program were sent home on temporary leave. Just days later, Yanukovych was ousted and an interim government was installed. I was encouraged that order had been restored, and that the volunteers would soon return to their host ci!es, towns, and

villages to resume their meaningful work. Not so fast. That hope for a fast return was thwarted when Rus#sian troops invaded Crimea and a daun!ng war with Ukraine’s colossal neighbor seemed likely.

The rapid change con!nued. Crimea was annexed from Ukraine through a dubious elec!on. Separa!sts incit#ed violence and formed their own “states” in parts of eastern Ukraine. A new president was elected amidst ongoing violence in the east. A&er being glued to my phone, computer and TV for a couple of weeks in the winter, I had to get on with my life. I had to nd a job, choose a graduate program for next year, and pay my bills. My readjustment has o%ered me plenty of challenges, which I’ve overcome one step at a !me. The cri#sis in Ukraine, on the other hand, has been overwhelming and out of my grasp. At !mes, I have avoided all news on Ukraine to focus on my own a%airs. It’s not so easy for my friends back in Ukraine to escape what is going on, but I know they are trying to do the same thing much of the !me. Life goes on, even amidst fear and instability. There are no PCVs in Ukraine, but the Peace Corps o$ce is s!ll open, and the sta% is con!nu#ing its hard work. TEFL Lead Specialist Tamara Prydatko, my former supervisor, wrote to me in April: “We are doing ne though some!mes it feels really scary. But then when you start doing things it gets be"er. The most important is not to watch TV and listen to news too much:#).”

On May 25 Ukraine elected President Petro Poroshenko in an elec!on deemed free and fair by observers. The voter turnout was 55.3 percent, despite separa!sts closing most polling sta!ons in the populous areas Donetsk and Luhansk. As it turns out, Ukraine is not a sleepy or apathe!c country. I just witnessed a ee!ng moment in a long history largely dened by a passionate ght for freedom and independence. Clearly, Ukrainians are ready to work for a be"er Ukraine, and I wish them all the best. To the many students, teachers, and community members who warmly embraced me in Ukraine for three years, '() *+,-.+/010! (All the best!)

Ukraine’s Hope

8

Edward Riehl (Ukraine ‘06#’08)

When I applied to the Peace Corps I was not thinking that I would one day nd myself in a city of nearly 2 million Russian#speaking people, teaching English to government workers of the former Soviet Union and to future public servants of Ukraine. But that is exactly where I found myself in 2006 when I got o% the train early one morning in northeastern Ukraine to begin my service as an English teacher at the Na!onal Academy of Public Admin#istra!on, Kharkiv Branch.

Khakiv, the former capital, is some 20 miles from the Russian border. It is home to the expansive Freedom

Square and its towering statue of Lenin, and to many hundred “Khrushchevskis,” the 5#story concrete apart#ment houses planted throughout the former Soviet Union in the &ies and six!es by the colorful Premier Nikita Khrushchev (of shoe#banging fame). Almost as numerous as the Krushchevskis are the universi!es, churches, military statues and memorials – including one marking the great famine and another the holo#caust in Ukraine.

The Na!onal Academy of Public Administra!on does not come under the Ministry of Educa!on, but rather falls under the O$ce of the President. The Director of the Academy is a minister#level appointee of the Presi#dent. In 2006, it a"racted many students as it was viewed as a pathway to a secure, if somewhat dull, career.

The Director of the Kharkiv Branch of the Academy during my years was a former General of the Soviet Army who looked exactly like a former General of the Soviet Army. Mustachioed, neck#less, barrel#chested and deep#throated, the General commanded respect.

The General wanted every student studying English at the Academy (95% of all students) exposed to “the American,” and so I was assigned a fairly heavy teaching load of English conversa!on classes. In return for

The map of Ukraine is nature’s own Rorschach inkblot test. What you see depends not on your eyesight but on your insight and beliefs. Is the country fracturing along the Dnieper River as it ows from Belarus to the Black Sea or coming together like two pieces of a puzzle? !

Ukraine’s Hope

9

Edward Riehl (Ukraine ‘06#’08)

that, I was allowed the freedom to teach whatever I wished.

The events of this spring in Ukraine have brought back many thoughts about those students, our discussions and their projects. I recall a debate in 2007 between the Masters students about whether Ukraine should join the EU or join again in an alliance with Russia, when the concerns were whether the EU would respect Ukraine’s culture and whether Russia would allow Ukraine to have an independent government. I remem#ber, too, the day we discussed the responsibility of residents for the condi!on of the hallways in their apart#ment building (in Soviet !mes, it fell to the government); and the day a 19 year#old undergraduate convinc#ingly argued that it would take four genera!ons for Ukraine to be strong enough to rule itself in a democra!c fashion, with considerable sacrice by each genera!on.

My thoughts this spring go most to the young women of Ukraine whom I came to view as the hope for the country’s future. Two groups in par!cular come to mind. The rst I taught dur#ing my training period in Nyzhyn in north cen#tral Ukraine where I was teaching English at the university in order to learn how to teach English to Ukrainian university students. One day I asked a class of bright young women why they had come to get a university educa!on. Their answer: to get a good job. As we moved on to what exactly they viewed as a good job was and where they would get such jobs, the mood grew somber. Over the next two ses#sions, the girls talked hear2ully about their dreams and later about their reality. Nearly all said they would return to their small villages a&er gradua!on to help their parents, either by caring for their kiosk#shops, or tending their cow, or harves!ng their beets. Their parents had lost every#thing when the Soviet Union collapsed, and had had to start over from scratch. There wasn’t enough !me to recover; so it fell to their children to help. Children sacricing their own futures for the welfare of their par#ents.

The Nyzhyn girls who looked forward to returning home to support their parents and grandparents.

Ukraine’s Hope

10

Edward Riehl (Ukraine ‘06#’08)

The other group of girls I met in eastern Ukraine. Those from Kharkiv were students at the Academy and those from Mykolayiv were co#counselors at a summer camp. These eight girls didn’t know each other at rst and got to know each other because of their work on projects for which I served as mentor. They had much in common: energy and intelligence, a sense of community responsibility, and a desire to change Ukraine.

These young women made things happen. Three of the girls who had o&en visited the Kharkiv orphanage started their own NGO, named The City Without Curtains, reec!ng their mission to tear down the “curtains” behind which society hid social problems such as its orphanages. That NGO, through fundraising and bartering, brought 25 university students from across Ukraine to Kharkiv for a ve#day exposi!on and orphans camp which, being held on the plaza in front of the opera house, drew curious crowds and na!onal TV coverage.

Two other girls developed a program they named the Inter#City Leadership Seminar (ILS). Its mission was to conduct one– to two#day leadership training sessions for university students in mul!ple ci!es in Ukraine.

Their goal was to ignite a spirit of community service. During their !me with ILS, they trained almost 300 students who ini!ated hundreds of service projects.

These eight young women, who are as close as sisters, and the young women from Ny#hzyn, are representa!ve of the youth of Ukraine. They are only the second genera!on of the four genera!ons of which that 19#year#old spoke that day at the Academy. They have great passion for their country and great love for their families. You see the future in their eyes. They know the price they must pay to make life be"er for their children and their children’s children. They accept it knowing that their lives will have been meaningful.

The!end!of!another!long!day!of!planning!for!the!eight!“sisters.”!!

!

Recent Events

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PAPCA members volunteering at the Aquinas Center on MLK Day

Board members hard at work during our most recent mee!ng

January’s dinner at Khmer Kitchen

April’s dinner at Le Bercail

Upcoming Events Wednesday,!July!2!@!6PM:!Happy!Hour!at!Nodding!Head—1516 Sansom St., 2nd Floor

No RSVP necessary

Wednesday,!August!6th!@!6PM!:!Happy!Hour!at!Nodding!Head—1516 Sansom St., 2nd Floor

No RSVP necessary

Saturday,!August!9th!@!6:30PM!:!Dinner!at!Moldova!Restaurant!(Moldovan)—9808 Bustleton Ave., Ste. B2

BYOB, with dancing and live music at 8PM!

RSVP with Jeanne#Marie at 215#919#9008 or jeannemarie.hagan@gmail.com

Wednesday,!September!3rd!@!6PM!:!Happy!Hour!at!Nodding!Head—1516 Sansom St., 2nd Floor

No RSVP necessary

Saturday,!September!13th!@!6PM!:!Dinner!at!Mekong!River!(Vietnamese)—1120#1124 Front St.

RSVP with Huu at 215#316#8491 or huuhngo@gmail.com

Wednesday,!October!1st!@!6PM!:!Happy!Hour!at!Nodding!Head—1516 Sansom St., 2nd Floor

No RSVP necessary

Saturday,!October!11th!@!6PM!:!Dinner!at!Dahlak!(Ethiopian)—4708 Bal!more Ave.

RSVP with Meg at 484#431#5211 or agentmeg@verizon.net

Date!TBD!:!Second!Annual!Peace!Corps"Teach!For!America!Story!Slam

More details coming soon! Contact Ellen at ellen.rhudy@gmail.com for more info

Wednesday,!November!5th!@!6PM!:!Happy!Hour!at!Nodding!Head—1516 Sansom St., 2nd Floor

No RSVP necessary

Saturday,!November!8th!@!6PM!:!Dinner!at!Indonesia!Restaurant!(BYOB)— 1725 Snyder Ave.

RSVP with Roseanne at 215#880#1858 or r_rostock@hotmail.com

Wednesday,!December!3rd!@!6PM!:!Happy!Hour!at!Nodding!Head—1516 Sansom St., 2nd Floor

No RSVP necessary

Saturday,!December!13th:!PAPCA’S!Annual!Holiday!Potluck

Details coming soon

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