The mentioned round table was one of the events of the international annual festival “Our Bloom - Across the World”, which has been held by the Institute of Diaspora Studies since 1999, with the organizers receiving assistance from the joint-stock companies Obolon, UkrSat, and Svitlytsia. A traditional event of the festival is the donation of materials on diaspora topics to the supreme bodies of state legislative and executive power, local government bodies, higher educational institutions, libraries, diplomatic missions of other states, and representations of international organizations accredited in Ukraine, and in countries of Ukrainian settlement - to Ukrainian diplomatic missions and Ukrainian institutions. Recently, with the assistance of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, almost 230 copies of the collection “The Fourth Wave of Emigration: Regional Peculiarities” were handed over to Ukrainian public, youth, and women's organizations, scientific institutions, magazine editorial boards, and also to Ukrainian diplomatic missions in Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Argentina, Belgium, Belarus, Bulgaria, Brazil, Great Britain, Armenia, Greece, Georgia, Denmark, Spain, Estonia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Canada, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Russia, Romania, Slovakia, the USA, Tajikistan, Hungary, France, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Sweden, and Yugoslavia. Several dozen collections in Ukraine were donated to government bodies, libraries, higher educational institutions, public organizations, and magazine editorial boards.
This year, the festival organizers, together with the Kyiv City State Administration, plan to hold a round table “The Fourth Wave of Emigration: Causes and Consequences”, to determine and award (together with the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine) the winners of the journalism competition, to enable the public screening of diaspora video films after receiving a sufficient number, and to honor the best films with diplomas and prizes, etc. The main event of the festival this year is the creation of an album-almanac “Prominent Figures of the Ukrainian Diaspora”.
The festival, whose goal is to promote the elevation of the level of national self-respect of the Ukrainian general public, is a non-commercial initiative; it implements all its events only with the assistance of benefactors.
Ihor VYNNYCHENKO,
Director of the Institute of Diaspora Studies,
Chairman of the Festival Secretariat.