In the top left corner photo Ihor Tkachuk is celebrating his 37-th birthday with his family. He was killed during one of the attacks on EuroMaidan protesters in Kyiv in February, 2014. We transferred $500 to support his family. On Tuesday, February 18th, 2014, as the situation in Kyiv was becoming dramatic he couldn’t watch the events on the TV, he couldn’t eat nor drink. He kept saying he had to be there, – Maria, Ihor’s 35 year old widow is telling us. She was begging him not to go and he replied: Do you think I am going there to die? I have young children to live for!
The final decision was made and off he went with his friend Yura. When the attack was announced he ran outside the Ukrainian House where they were staying in a light shirt and pants, only managing to grab the helmet. That’s how he was found later, shot in the temple. Maria is left with three children, Eugene, 17, Ivanna, 12, and Denis, 1 year old. They live in a small two-room wooden house, smeared with clay on the edge of Velika Kamenka village, Kolomiyskiy district, Ivano-Frankivsk Region.
‘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.
