On 14 May 2016 in Toronto, Canada, the Chair and Deputy Chair of the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) International Educational Coordinating Council (IECC), Oksana A. Wynnyckyj-Yusypovych and Yevgeniya Petrova met with the Minister of Education of Ukraine Liliia Hrynevych during her working visit to Canada.
The IECC Chair, Deputy Chair and the Minister discussed future areas of mutually beneficial cooperation between educators in Ukraine and the Ukrainian Diaspora, specifically: support that Ukraine’s educators can provide the Diaspora in teaching the Ukrainian language; and, the service that professional Diaspora teachers, who are involved in the education systems of their respective countries of citizenship, can bring to educational reform in Ukraine.
The IECC Deputy Chair Yevgeniya Petrova informed the Minister that teachers in the Diaspora who teach in supplementary elementary and secondary (Saturday, Sunday and evening) classes have extensive experience in Ukrainian Studies education and have accumulated a significant amount of teaching-learning materials for different age groups and levels of Ukrainian language competency. She also noted that one of the current challenges faced by the IECC is to collect, organize and update this wide range of materials, as well as, to make it available to teachers world-wide, wherever the Ukrainian language is taught.
For her part, the Chair of the IECC Oksana A. Wynnyckyj-Yusypovych noted that, while in Canada, the Minister of Education of Ukraine will have the opportunity to get acquainted with the characteristics of the various provincial education systems of Canada during meetings with the principals, teachers, curriculum developers and superintendents, many of whom are members of the Ukrainian Diaspora and speak Ukrainian.
“Currently, since Ukraine is preparing to develop a competency-based curriculum, professional Diaspora teachers, who work or have worked in the education systems of their countries, are willing to actively participate together with their colleagues in Ukraine in transforming the education system of Ukraine to meet the needs of the 21st century,” stated IECC Head Oksana A. Wynnyckyj-Yusypovych.
