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their contributions are being distributed according to their wishes. Candidates for scholarships are nominated by local Ukrainian organizations, Institutes (Ukrainian academic residences), or parish priests who testify to the student's economic need and good character. The student’s attendance in good standing at a high school or univer sity must be confirmed each semester by a letter from the registrar of that institution before any scholarship aid is sent to the student. The treasurer of the Scholarship Program, Mrs. Irena Kaczaniwska of Philadelphia, sends out scholarship checks directly to the students, handles all financial transactions and keeps all financial records. She works closely with the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee, a charitable organization with inter national status. Indeed, this organization has supported the Scholarship Program from the very beginning, with a donation of -3,000 to it in 1973. In a further effort to monitor the administration of what had become a world-wide community fund raising effort, UNWLA’s National Executive Board voted to send Dr. Sawycka to Brazil for an on-site assessment of local needs and an evaluation of the actual operation of the Scholarship Program on the local level. Dr. Sawycka’s oral and written accounts of her month long sojourn, to remote Ukrainian settlements deep in the interior of Brazil in April 1975, as well as photographs and tapes documenting the life of Ukrainians there, corroborated the existence of a real need for further scholarship assistance to the children of these settlements. Indeed her series of talks in various, Ukrainian communities, illustrated by an audio-visual show further heightened public interest in both the Brazilian Ukrainian community and UNWLA’s scholarship effort there. And what, you may ask, are the concrete asp ects of th ese programs for which the taxpayer is footing the bill. To cite but a few exam ples from among the many very promising developments: 1) teachers and councelors are receiving in-service training to teach them how to treat students equally; workshops are being conducted to help them explore their own prejudices and to help them realize how such attitudes negatively affect the achievem ent levels of their students; 2) social studies and history textbooks are being rewritten to include women as participants in the developm ent and progress of humanity; for example, the role of women in the taming of the Western Frontier is now recognized in many texts and words such as "frontiersmen” are being eliminated b ecause they ascribe gender-defined limitations where none existed; 3) "adult living” rather than ’’home eco n o m ics” cou rses are being taught for coeducational classes; boys and girls learn cooking and basic household budgeting, as well as simple auto m echanics and carpentry; 4) at the graduate and post-doctoral levels sociological, anthropological, psychological and historical studies are being conducted as the "woman issu e” gains ground in the halls of academe; this research is bringing to light much new, as well as long-lost, data that provides the basis for improving our un derstanding of the world-including the role of women, the family and other ignored asp ects of human society. As can be imagined, the creation of an intercontinen tal scholarship effort — linking a network of (currently) 171 scholarship students and other organizations and in dividuals in South America, 120 donors from all over the world and on UNWLA’s part, an administrator of the Pro gram in Utica, N.Y., its treasurer in Philadelphia and UNWLA headquarters in New York City — has truly been a herculean task involving an enormous amount of paper work and coordination. Remarkably enough, only 2% of funds collected for the Scholarship Program has gone to the administration of the program (postage, telephone, supplies), an un usually low figure for any charitable organization. This has only been possible because all those involved in the administration of the program have contributed their own free time to this cause. The inevitable question arises: Has it been worth the effort? And is it worth the donor’s contribution? Letters of recent young graduates, beneficiaries of UNWLA’s Scholarship Program, testify to their desire to share with others the generosity which Ukrainians from around the world have shown to them in contributing to their education. A young agriculture specialist writes that with his newly acquired training, he wishes to devote a portion of his time to raising agricultural output of Ukrainian farmers. A young Ukrainian dentist in a Brazilian city writes tht she will treat Ukrainians from the villages free of charge. A young Ukrainian teacher has volunteered to move to a remote area of Parana in order to teach the children of 4th generation Ukrainian settlers there.There is an awareness on the part of these young people and many others that they must return to Ukrainian society that kindness which has been shown to them by Ukrainians from across the sea. Further more they have pledged to aid others who wish to follow in their footsteps and obtain an education. Given the slow but steady progress in the area of educational equity, the most important result is that today’s generation of students will receive a better education. In order to fully achieve this goal within our lifetime, however, we must pressure the educational establishm ent to initiate more, and to sustain current, reforms. Parents, more than any other group, can provide the stimulus for positive change: by reviewing their children’s textbooks, by becom ing involved in parent/teacher associations and by demanding quality education and fair, non- discriminatory practices in the sch o o ls their children attend. Most importantly, they can complain whenever their child is being sterotyped or discriminated against. Teachers and administrators are the secon d group w hose support for change is crucial. They can refuse to order books which are sex-biased. They can develop supplementary lesso n s to counterbalance sex-stereotyped texts and materials in class. They can en courage students to think and behave without prejudice. Most importantly, they can commit th em selves to treating each child with care, respect and concern in order to support the growth and developm ent of that child’s ability re gardless of the student’s gender. There is but one reason for caring whether the educational system provides unbiased, nonstereotyped, humanistic education: the future. The future is our children and our children’s children who need not be enslaved by age-old prejudices and limitations. Educational equity is a question of justice and we ow e our children nothing less. НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ, ТРАВЕНЬ, 1978 23
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