UVic Ukrainian Students’ Society

The 2019-2020 academic year was a big milestone for the University of Victoria (UVic) Ukrainian Students’ Society. Despite it being only our second year of operation, we had a successful year of events and grew our membership from the previous year. We are lucky to live in a city like Victoria, B.C. which has such a vibrant and strong Ukrainian community. Our goal with our club has always been to help bridge the gap between the community and the university community to help both Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian students alike connect with Ukrainian Cultural and take advantage of all the wonderful opportunities that it has to offer. As we are still a new organization, a lot of our work was centred around growing our presence both on campus and in our local Ukrainian community. On campus, we partnered with other cultural clubs and organizations some of whom included Hillel, the Jewish student organization, partnering with them to bring their “Multicultural Festival of Lights” to campus showcasing the diversity of our community. We also worked with our International Student community, hosting a varenyky making workshop where students from all over the world were able to try their hand at making varenyky, even sharing with us how they make dumplings in their home countries.

We also hosted many events on campus as well. Our Holodomor Awareness Campaign was very successful. We organized a week of activities for UVic students to become educated about the Holodomor including a screening of the film “That Never Happened,” hosting information tables as well as bringing the “Holodomor fine foods” food tasting experience to campus which allowed students to experience first-hand the roots, bark and grass Ukrainians were forced to eat to survive with the support of Roma Dzerowicz from the Holodomor Awareness tours.

In our community, we worked hard to maintain strong relationships with our local Ukrainian organizations partnering extensively with the Church and our Cultural Centre. We have maintained an active role in our Centre’s library renovation project helping to catalogue their library books into an online database. As a club, our members also frequently help out pinching varenyky for the monthly Ukrainian Suppers, citing that “nothing beats hanging out with the babas.”

Our club is very grateful to St. George’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church for their continued support of our students providing us with a space to host our annual perogy-making workshop and fundraiser. Despite the onset of the pandemic cutting our sales short, we had a huge success delivering our orders door to door, fundraising $600 for the club. Along with other members of the church, our students participated in the Church’s annual Kolyada event. We had a great time carolling and although it was a first for many of our members, it certainly won’t be our last as we look forward to continuing on the tradition.

Most importantly, we had a lot of fun this past year. Through the club, our members were able to travel across the country to take part in Ukrainian Events all over Canada. We travelled to Nanaimo to see Dakhabrakha in concert, then on to Vancouver to catch the premiere of Mr. Jones at the Vancouver Film Festival, and finally to Ottawa to represent SUSK at the Ukrainian Canadian Congress’ (UCC) triennial Congress.

Transferring our programming to an online format will prove to be an interesting challenge but we are nonetheless excited for another year of success at UVic.