Lviv students hosted more than a thousand students from Eastern Ukraine

More than a thousand students from Eastern Ukraine visited Lviv during the past 9 weekends. As part of the “From East to West” program, Lviv students hosted students from Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kharkiv oblasts. The aim of this project led by the Ukrainian Catholic University is to overcome stereotypes. All information was presented by the organizers and participants of the project on the press-briefing in Ukraine Crises Media Center, the Ukrainian Catholic University information department informs.  

"This project was generated by the society. Students of the city of Lviv understood for themselves that they need more communication with their peers from different regions of Ukraine. They need to share their ideas, plans, and experience and to borrow initiatives," said YuliaHnativ, an organizer of the project. "However, this was a good opportunity for participating students from the other cities to communicate in their own community, because all of them represent different educational institutions. And already after visiting Lviv, seeing how students can influence society, they are getting together. They make their own community projects – inviting students from other cities and initiating changes."

At the beginning,organizers planned to accept near fifty students every weekend. However, in the first two weeks, more than fifteen hundred application forms were received. Thus, we selected people using two criteria: those who had not been in Lviv before or not; as well as those, who wereactively engaged in social projects in their cities.

Altogether, from the 3,120 applications that were received, the following number of student visited Lviv: Donetsk – ­85 persons (146 applications), Zaporizhzhia – 100 persons (438 applications), Kharkiv – 218 persons (798 applications), Dnipropetrovsk – 105 persons (543 applications), Donetsk (second group) – 94 persons (568 applications), Luhansk – 75 persons (288 applications), Kryvyi Rih 82 persons (273 applications).

Already this weekend, we expect new visitors in Lviv. About 150 students from Crimea and southern Ukraine will visit Lviv.

Also, as part of the "From East to West" project at the Ukrainian Catholic University, the traditional event "Easter together" took place, when students and staff of the university welcomed over 200 students from different cities of Ukraine.

Mr. Pavlo Hobzey, a vice rector of Ukrainian Catholic University, emphasized that those actions could be useful, if the mobility of student environment inside our country could be raised. As an example, he proposed to start a student exchangeprogram between Ukrainian universities, where "students could visit and study for a semester at a university in another city and all courses would be credited. It would be a great opportunity to study and to explore our country. It is not only the East that does not know the West, but vice versa. Yes, we are different. But the otherness should not be seen as a hostility."

Ms. Darya Fomenko, a participant of the project from Donetsk, said "our biggest enemy is stereotypes. These kinds of visits help us to dispel myths. I feel ashamed and hurt of the what is happening in the Donetsk region. I want to overcome this gap." She also highlighted that students from the east want to continue the tradition and invite colleagues from Lviv and Western Ukraine to Donetsk, but currently they can't realize their plans because of the unsafe situation in Donetsk and Luhansk at the moment.