Lviv— On 9 June 2008, the First Ecumenical Social Week was launched in Lviv under the motto “Help your Neighbor!” The organizers of the event are the Lviv City Government, the Lviv Regional Government, the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU), and UCU’s Institute of Ecumenical Studies.
The week’s first event was awarding the winners in a contest of drawing and essays on the theme “Help Your Neighbor!” (See photo.) Hundreds of school children from western Ukrainian Lviv took part in the contest.
The weeklong event will include an international academic conference entitled “The Cooperative Movement in Ukraine,” workshops for social organizations of Lviv, and an ecumenical cultural festival with the participation of musicians, actors, painters, and photographers.
Partners of the week include the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the World Council of Churches, the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund, and the Lviv Association of Credit Unions.
One of the event’s organizers, Dr. Antoine Arjakovskyi, director of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies, defined the purpose of the ecumenical social week in the following way: “to unite all the denominations in Ukraine around social issues, because social doctrines tend to coalesce around shared all-human values. We want follow in the footsteps of Western European states which have held social weeks that have influenced social policy since the beginning of the last century.”
The academic conference will center on the Ukrainian Cooperative Movement, an example of the unification of Ukrainians of different denominations around common goals in the post-war period. This movement was also proliferated by Ukrainian diaspora, whose banks, credit unions, and cooperatives became an important factor in the wellbeing of the community and the preservation of its cultural identity. The conference will be held on 12-13 June at Ivan Franko National University in Lviv and aims to bring this positive experience to modern native Ukrainians.
The main topics of the conference include: “Models of social policy in Ukraine and their incorporation into the work of the Ukrainian churches” and “The experience of Western Europe with Christian social policy.”
The ecumenical week will also include workshops for Christian and Jewish organizations. Round table discussions are to be held on the topics of social work and ecumenical engagement, social policy in the Lviv region, Christian approaches to problems of family and youth, Christian approaches to the environment, and international cooperation on social policy.
A cultural festival also spans the entire week and will include a drawing competition, theatre performances, a photo exhibition, documentary showings, and concerts.
Contact
Ukrainian Catholic University
vul. Ilariona Sventsitskoho, 17
Lviv, 79011, UKRAINE
