Mission

The main goal of this working group is to create an environment for intellectual exchange between PC Ukraine volunteers on the topic of leadership development and citizenship skills. The Civics Education Working Group aims to assess the growing demand from host-country sites to teach about civics, American culture, country studies, and generally, leadership and citizenship skills.

Basic citizenship and leadership skills are intrinsic to the development of a healthy youth and therefore should be a top priority of the Youth Development Program, as well as Peace Corps Ukraine on the whole. Currently there is a dearth of forums in which students may interactively participate and learn about their government and the resulting impact has been a Ukrainian youth that is generally uninformed, apathetic, or generally disinterested in civic responsibility. To combat such sentiments, this working group aims to develop and disseminate new and interactive learning methods for teaching the youth of Ukraine the importance of developing themselves as model citizens.

Providing information on the topic of citizenship and government structure represents only one dimension of achieving a person's interaction with society as a model citizen. A model citizen also understands how to apply this knowledge in a manner that allows them to utilize their own skills while also enhancing their community. In acknowledgement of the multi-faceted nature of creating a society of well-informed model citizens this working group will strive to develop means through which Ukraine's youth may engage and interact as informed individuals, active citizens, and leaders. Given the target age group, educating the youth on how to conduct a job search, select a university, and choose a major will be areas of focus in personal development while the practices of fundraising and volunteerism will be stressed as necessary to community development. To further this objective an additional long-term goal of this group will be to develop an internship program that extends the opportunity to talented and motivated youth to further hone their citizenship skills.

Goals

- Adaptation of Leadership Club Materials for TEFL Work

- Compilation of Oblast Information Guide

- Volunteerism Camp

- Compilation of Successful Local Secondary Project Partners at Site

- Gatering and distributing materials 

- Producing a "Civics Dictionary" with Ukrainian and Russian translation

- Promoting volunteerism

- Teaching about government and civil society

- Education about the effects of human trafficking

- Encouraging voting – specifically teaching about how to think critically about how one chooses to vote

- Professional development – resumes, cover letters, interview skills

- Defining leadership

Membership

Grant Earich, Hannah Thoburn, Keith Hayden, Jason Cammarano, Patrick Schreiber and staff liason Iryna Shevchenko.

Contact

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it