Stronger Communities through Stronger Organizations

Tynia Soltys of PLAST, Yuriy Diakunchak representing
both Ukrainian Canadian Art Foundation and
Ukrainian Credit Union Limited and Natalya Khakhula
and Christine Kowalenko both memebrs of CYMK.

On Saturday April 13, the Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress held a seminar to help Ukrainian community organizations succeed in their missions. The event was sponsored by Ukrainian Credit Union, The Canadian Ukrainian Immigrant Aid Society and the Shevchenko Foundation.

The event was organized by Christine Kuzyk of UCEF. More than 60 representatives of 30 different Ukrainian Community organizations attended. The seminar focused around a presentation from Elisabethe Way, the Chief Development Officer of Stratagems Group. She spoke on a number of topics throughout the day. In the morning she focused on the roles and responsibilities of a board member and how to be an effective board member. In the afternoon she continued with discussions about the purpose of a board and how board members can provide "transformational leadership".

Elisabethe Way was led the day-long seminar

Thoughout the day attendees got the chance to break out in groups and tackle some exercises designed to get them to focus on the core values and mission of their respective organizations.

At lunchtime, keynote speakers David Kravinchuk (a self-described 4th generation Ukrainian) and Parag Tandon spoke about the Key Factors in Healthy Donor Relationships. Their talk was broken into three sections: Passion, People and Planning. In each section they provided examples of communities getting together to fund and build things like a mosque in Maple and a wing of a new Brampton Hospital dedicated to Sikh founder Guru Nanak. The communities not only had to find funding for their projects, but they also needed to work with their neighbours to ensure that there would not be any resentment or hostility to their plans.

Attendees at the seminar agreed that it was a very worthwhile venture and that similar events should be held more often.

You can see more pictures from this event in the Stronger Communities photo album on our FB page.

Another group of seminar attendees work on a group project