Finding food for the soul.

Ukrainian teacher Oksana Kuchman says that her `spiritual renovation' began when she joined a pilgrimage to the Catholic shrine of Lourdes in France. It was organized by her church in Lviv which she describes as `a beautiful, ancient town in the western part of Ukraine near the border with Poland'.

She had just left Lviv State University with an advanced degree in English Language and Literature. She was not sure what she wanted to do with her life and was dissatisfied with her temporary job. `I was an ordinary selfish girl who took it for granted she would receive everything she wanted with the minimum of effort,' she says. `I was arrogant and careless of others' feelings, convinced that almost everybody owed me something.' She also liked to humiliate people. `It was a form of entertainment,' she says. But despite all this she continued to attend church every Sunday and it was there that she learned about the trip to France.

`France was a country I used to dream about, so I decided to go.' She didn't have particularly high expectations. `It was a way of having a good rest and perhaps meeting interesting new people.' But something happened there that she finds hard to explain. `I began to think over my actions and to analyze my previous way of life. I felt a key was being turned inside me. God seemed to be giving me a new chance, helping me to come alive to him in a new way, opening a door.'

She wasn't at all sure what this `call' meant or where it would lead. `I didn't feel I had the spiritual strength or depth to find the next steps on my own,' she explains. It was just then that she had the opportunity to take part in a teachers seminar in nearby Pidbuzh. It was organized by Foundations for Freedom, a programme of MRA reaching out to young people in the countries of the former Soviet Union. She recalls that during the five days of the seminar, in the discussions and in talks with the facilitators from western Europe, whole new vistas opened for her. `My soul needed food and I found it there. When I returned home I found I had discovered fresh confidence and a new mental toughness. It was as if I was on a new track. I no longer fell into depression or gave up when things didn't go the way I wanted them to. There was also a new love for, and patience with, people. I was able to trust them and to forgive them for their faults. Even if I didn't immediately know exactly what decisions to make about the future, I knew how to make them and how to move ahead.'

Soon she realized that what she really wanted to do was to teach. She found a job as lecturer in English at the Western Ukrainian College in Lviv. `I believe that through teaching I can fully express myself and at the same time be useful to others.' She says she has begun to care about other people. She now meets once a week with a group of students where they can discuss personal problems as well as wider issues and the things that really interest them--`just like we did at the seminar in Pidbuzh'. `I'd like to help them and myself to change something inside us,' she says. She dreams, too, of improving the country's education system.

She has also begun to think of those leaving college who have great difficulty in finding employment. She aims to start a project in which young people can be given practical work experience in large companies abroad, in return for just their board and lodging. A condition would be their return to the Ukraine once the agreed period with the company was completed. `Of course I will need support for such a project and I am looking for potential partners who might be interested,' she says.