This blog is for YMCA Calgary youth delegates to share their experiences as they visit our partners at YMCA Ukraine. International YMCA partnerships allow us to build global awareness through real relationships. We share knowledge and resources while we learn from each other. Young leaders develop skills and confidence to advance peace, social justice and dignity in their own community.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Subotnik on a Tuesday
In the Soviet Union, citizens were encouraged to use their saturdays as a day where they would work voluntarily for the betterment of communist society and to assist in the forward direction towards a socialist utopia. Also know as a day for Lenin, dedicated to the first leader of the Soviet Union Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin, saturdays saw the cleaning up of local parks, harvesting collective farms, and even cleaning the communal apartment...this is no longer an official day in Ukraine, but today volunteers of the YMCA got together to clean and organize the local YMCA. It was a great day filled with hard work, laughs and Ukrainian friendship, and in the end, the YMCA looks wonderful for the 1st of June children's day concert celebration. I am very proud to have taken part in cleaning up the YMCA building, from scrubbing window to cleaning ceilings it was a perfect day. There was talk about soviet times, and of course I had to throw in some useless facts that I know about the Soviet Union and Ukrainian society from my undergraduate studies...sometimes i feel like an outsider because I know more facts about Ukrainian history (well mostly Soviet) than many Ukrainians. :) What a great day and it was so much fun to share it with some of the YMCA's hardest working volunteers.
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Such an inspiring post to read!
ReplyDeleteOn Saturday, Kaitlin, Lindsay, and I are going to the Calgary Ukrainian Festival. The Ukrainian Diaspora have survived and thrived in Western Canada because of volunteerism and community-mindedness. I look forward to sharing with people at the festival how YMCA Ukraine is restoring the volunteer spirit that they sometimes fear was lost back in Ukraine during Soviet times.
Hi Joey,
ReplyDeleteI was wondering if you could write about what is like to walk down the street. I have seen pictures of the Y there. I would like to get an idea of what people see everyday when they go to work.
Can you also write about what people eat? I don't think I will make it to the Ukraine and I want to get a picture of how similar and different our lives are.
Many thanks, Laurie