The number of Ukrainians volunteering abroad has increased as Ukraine's economy has become more international.
Olha Denyshchyk, 35, an ecologist, worked with rare and threatened species in Bangladesh.
Oleksiy Vitte, 56, a radiologist, has spent the last 12 years fighting tuberculosis and other life-threatening health ailments in Africa.
Valeriy Shyrokov, 34, an elections logistics specialist, went to Liberia in 2005 and is now studying for a Ph.D. to advance his career.
These Ukrainians have all been United Nations volunteers, working internationally despite holding Ukrainian passports that can prove to be hindrances in obtaining visas and work permits abroad.
Denyshchyk, Vitte and Shyrokov had to compete with 50,000 professionals from around the globe to apply for spots on the coveted United Nations missions. Last year, 23 Ukrainians were selected out of 7,500 volunteers.
“The number of professionals has really grown as Ukraine’s economy becomes more international. People have started speaking English, so we can send them all over the world,” said Giovanni Mozzarelli, a former volunteer in Kosovo who now heads the United Nations’ volunteer program in Ukraine.
Yet volunteering remains a stigmatized activity in Ukraine. This dates back to at least Soviet times, when people were forced to “volunteer” during “subotnikis” – working to clean or garden on Saturdays.
Olha Denyshchyk, a volunteer from Ukraine, films rare species with a colleague in Bangladesh under a United Nations monitoring program.
Only 158 Ukrainians registered to participate in U.N. volunteers program, half the number from Poland, which has fewer people.
Age – as long as the person is at least 25 years of age — is not the biggest factor for the United Nations.
“We are looking for energetic people, who are confident in their professional skills, ready to explore a new culture and challenge themselves,” Mozzarelli said.
The general requirements to participate are the ability to speak English, French or Spanish, a university degree followed by two to five years of relevant experience and commitment to the principles of volunteering.
Specialists most in demand are medical workers, engineers,logisticians, procurement specialists, warehouse managers, specialists with experience in humanitarian assistance, transport coordinators and radio technicians.
The assignments last from six to 24 months.
The volunteers don’t work entirely for free. They receive an allowance that covers traveling, lodging, food and other daily expenses. Those who serve in dangerous locations also get time off.
Denyshchyk, Vitte and Shyrokov say the experience changed not only their lives for the better, but those of the people they worked with in far-flung nations
Alone in a Muslim world
Waving goodbye to her mother and brother at Boryspil airport in 2007, Olha Denyshchyk, an ecologist from Kyiv, could not imagine what her mission of conserving species in Bangladesh would be like.
She was ready for hard work with minimal conveniences in the subtropical humidity and heat. She had prepared by studying for a master’s degree in the United States.
But she was hit by a different culture shock: All her colleagues in Bangladesh were male and Muslim. She was the only white woman for hundreds of kilometers, making her a source of fascination for villagers who photographed and videotaped her.
“People would just come to stare at me,” recalled Denyshchyk, six months after returning from the mission.
With time, things got easier, and her colleagues turned out to be caring and supportive.
“They were amazing people. Especially after they learned that I don’t smoke and drink vodka. This is the image that Bangladeshis have [of Western women] from Hollywood movies.
They think that all the European and American woman get drunk in a bar every night and change boyfriends like gloves,” she says.
She was struck by the religious tolerance in a predominately Muslim nation. Co-workers insisted on driving her by motorbike to a tiny church 15 kilometers from the town she lived in.
Together with two colleagues from the Philippines and Egypt, Denyshchyk implemented an ecological monitoring program and trained local personnel in a small town in northern Bangladesh.
Volunteering also helped Denyshchyk – who now lives in Scotland – to spice up her resume.
But most of all, she learned to value the life she now leads after a trip to the “hellish” main emergency room in Bangladesh’s capital of Dhaka.
Culture shocks
When Oleksiy Vitte went to treat patients abroad for the first time, it was not all about saving the world. In 1996, he was working as head of the radiology department at the central emergency hospital in Kyiv. Like many other Ukrainians, his salary was paid in a big pile of worthless coupons.
A colleague of Vitte’s from Yemen invited him to work in one of the nation’s private hospitals. He accepted, learning to speak English in his 40s and to respect the traditions of the strict Muslim country. “For every procedure [involving a woman], there had to be a relative present in the room,” he said.
Once Vitte told a sick man’s relatives that he might die. They stlaughed. “My interpreter later explained that in their culture everything is in God’s hands, and therefore no one can predict death, not even a doctor,” he recalled.
At the hospital, Vitte met a U.N. representative who suggested that he become a U.N. volunteer. He was picked to work in a state hospital on the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar.
“They’d never had a radiologist in Zanzibar before,” recalls Vitte. “So there was a lot of work to catch up on. In one week I usually had two or three new cases of tuberculosis, which is a lot.”
In 2007, Vitte joined a United Nations mission in South Africa. He says he found the experience professionally rewarding even though locals were “embittered by apartheid” and “very hostile to people with white skin.”
An even bigger challenge met him upon his arrival back to Ukraine. A prestigious private hospital offered Vitte a job with good working hours and pay, but he says he was asked to falsely diagnose patients in order to get them to spend more money on expensive procedures they didn’t need.
“I refused and I resigned,” Vitte said.The moral contrast with his work for the U.N. is stark. “The United Nations missions have the spiritual meaning of helping people,” Vitte said. “I felt needed and appreciated for my service,” he says.
From elections to Ph.D.
Valeriy Shyrokov has always been drawn to the countries that needed help. Before embarking upon his trip to help in African elections, he worked as an elections logistics expert on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) team at the elections in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Macedonia and Moldova.
In 2005, during a break between his OSCE assignments, he applied to the U.N. program.
He was invited to work as part of a presidential election in Liberia, an impoverished equatorial African country that was holding its first vote after 14 years of civil war.
“I packed my suitcases right away. I was so excited,” recalled Shyrokov, who is now studying for a Ph.D. in public policy and policy analysis at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.
Arriving in the middle of a rainy season and with campaign in full swing, Shyrokov was immediately faced with a number of challenges, such as impassable roads and an insufficient number of places to host polling stations. “We set up cardboard polling booths on the street or in tents,” he recalled.
He had to convince people about the need for elections.
“Different nongovernmental organizations arranged for troupes of actors to travel around the country with sketches, dances and songs explaining to people how to vote,” Shyrokov said.
With a literacy rate of only 56 percent, people voted according to the candidates’ pictures. The troupes taught people to accept the results of the election peacefully, as Liberia is notorious for sporadic armed conflicts, he adds.
The 2005 election in Liberia was a success. It was recognized free and fair by the international observers and resulted in the election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first female president in African history.
Shyrokov said he learned to appreciate life in Ukraine after living in a country where 85 percent of people live on less than $1.25 per day.
“I feel lucky to be born in Ukraine. The bullets are not swishing above my head and I can safely go to the supermarket. That’s what happiness is about,” Shyrokov said.
Shyrokov said his time in Africa was a coming-of-age experience that convinced him he should study for a Ph.D. in politics, before, he hopes, returning to work for the U.N.
“The year of 2005 was as significant for me as to the Liberians. My personal evolution was like when to animals coming out from ocean to dry land,” he said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Kateryna Grushenko can be reached at [email protected].
