Head Organisers
PAPAS and MAMAS Olga Popovych and Fabian Sommer take a deeper insight on the head organisers and their way of taking care of their “baby” – VinSpring National Selection Conference.
If an EYP Session is like a small child, the head organisers are the loving parents who first give birth and then nurture their baby for months. The difference is that the tools of a good EYP session parent are not strollers, pacifiers, or bibs, but a cell phone, a watch, and nerves of steel. Thus the VinSpring parents, Violetta Kolisnichenko and Andriy Naavhust, are seldom seen without a cell phone pressed to their ear. As a matter of fact, you can hardly see them at all. Andriy and Violetta gave birth to the session about four months ago.
18 Mellow
It started out as a plan for a mini session. However, they were soon asked to organise a National Selection Conference instead. Naturally, after the initial surprise, Violetta could not refuse, and their journey to make VinSpring a reality started. Violetta is from Vinnitsa but has now moved to Kiev to study Chinese in a university there. When she is not listening to ABBA, her favourite band, she either is studying, doing EYP, or working part time at a children’s centre. She claims that stress is her biggest fear at the session. However, she remains calm
even when dozens of people run to her for aid. She loves her fellow organisers like a mother loves her children, and insists that her team is her most important accessory while organising – even outranking coffee. Her co-head organiser, Andriy, whom she describes as “hard working” and “a good leader,” is also from Vinnitsa. Though unlike Violetta he is not a fan of ABBA – he prefers country music. Despite the fact that he participated to only one EYP session as a delegate, he was not afraid of the challenge and made the decision to head–organ-