From the 16-17 September, a Druzynnyk’s Conference was held as part of the Svitovij Olympic Zlet Druzynnykiv CYM in Sydney. It was organised and facilitated by the Head of the Vychovna Rada (Education Council) of the National Executive of CYM Australia, Tatiana Zachariak, in conjunction with the President of the Sydney branch of CYM, Vasyl Senko. Volodymyr Szlachetko from the World CYM Council was also present.

The first part of the Conference, under the theme of  "CYM also needs champions" occurred in the presence of 35 druzynnyky from different parts of the world.

The aim was to assist druzynnyky recognise and acknowledge their place in society, especially Ukrainian society and CYM. This was undertaken in a context of  "Olympics and Champions". Basically we wanted those present to understand that CYM needs champions with similar characteristics to the champions participating in the Olympics, and because not everyone can be a champion to at least be a team player in CYM and understand that teams need each person’s support.

In order to develop an understanding of this notion, participants were taken through a series of exercises relating to concepts of identity, personal values, the notion of community, Ukrainian community, CYM as an organization in that community, CYM values, characteristics of champions, characteristics and values of druzynnyky, the role of druzynnyky in CYM and the input of voluntary work into the organization. All participants received a fridge magnet boomerang as an Australian symbol and a symbol of returning something of themselves back into the organization.

Of course most of the participants were from Australia – Sydney, Melbourne, Geelong, Newcastle and Perth, but we also had CYMivtsi from Canada, USA and Great Britain.

On the Sunday, following mass attended by druzynnyky, we continued our conference. In the presence of 45 druzynnyky this time, we repeated our druzynnyk’s oath and started our debate:  “Ukrainians should barrack for the Ukrainian teams in the Olympics and not for those teams from the countries in which they were born.”

This topic created some great presentations. The affirmative side consisting of Christina Moravski (Australia), Roman Matla (Canada) and Hanya Szlachetko (Great Britain) were beaten by the support of thunderous applause for the negative side of Larysa Brecko, Stefan Moskaljuk and Julianna Moravski (all from Australia), whose main argument was that you shouldn’t have to pick, but you can barrack for one and the other.

Tania Zachariak