With your help Nova Ukraine provided 0 for a family of Ivan Blyok who was killed near Zhovtnevyi Palace by a sniper on February 20th. Ivan had three children – an 8-year old daughter and a 13-year old son, and a 21-year old daughter from his first marriage. According to his wife Nataliya Blyok, Ivan was not a fighter at all and hadn’t even served in the army. He was a very nice and peace loving man. However, he had a strong notion of fairness and during Maydan he didn’t want to remain passive and frequently went to Kyiv from his home town Horodok, Lviv Region, to join protesters.
On the night from February 18th to February 19th Ivan was getting too worried in front of his TV at home that too few people remained on Maidan and that the protest could be suppressed, so he left for Maidan again. He hugged his daughter Lilya who was seeing him off to the taxi cab and told her: “Goodbye, my child, I’ll come back as a hero!” Those were Ivan’s last words to his family.
In peaceful times Ivan frequently went to Germany to work in the construction and as a driver to support his family.
The aid was provided before the Government of Ukraine announced about finally starting disbursements of financial aid to the families of the Heavenly Hundred.
‘Language and Thinking’ Program Prepares Young Ukrainians for Future Leadership
With Nova Ukraine’s support, Bard College leads writing- and discussion-filled workshops on the topic of justice Students from across Ukraine developed critical reading, writing, and civic leadership skills in a new program this summer supported by Nova Ukraine. The tuition-free, residential program, called Language and Thinking Kyiv, was based on Bard College’s Institute for Writing and Thinking approach to learning and was led by students and faculty members from the school. A total of 29 high school students completed the three-week program, which focused on the theme of “justice.” Students read and discussed texts written by Václav Havel, Lesia Ukrainka, Martin Luther King Jr., and others, and zeroed in on topics such as freedom, responsibility, and dignity. The students worked in small, immersive workshops and practiced a variety of writing formats, including free writing, loop writing, and process writing—all in English—and then shared and discussed their work with their classmates to examine and refine their own thought processes. One example of their assignments was the use of dialectical notebooks, in which students write down their thoughts about a text they had read together, then pass their notebook to another student to add their perspective.
