Vasyl Balan
City of Residence: Winnipeg
BIO
He served as a CYMK President at the local, provincial and national levels between 1961-1976, during which time he helped to initiate the highly successful CYMK Cultural Immersion Camp and various leadership programs, and in 1968 organized a groundbreaking tour by CYMKivtsi of Soviet Ukraine-the first such visit by youth members of the non-Communist Ukrainian-Canadian community. A life-long activist in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada, he has for fourteen years been the President of St. Mary the Protectress Orthodox Sobor in Winnipeg. He has also served five years on the board of St. Andrew’s College, two terms on the Consistory of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada, and eight years on the executive of the UOCC Foundation. As part of his involvement in the church, he played a key role in organizing two successful Canadian tours of the Vydubychi Monastery Choir of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate.
He was a founding member and organizer of the Ukrainian Bilingual Program in Manitoba Public Schools, and was instrumental in the province adopting heritage language legislation. He was also one of the founding members of the Manitoba Parents for Ukrainian Education and the Osvita Foundation.
From 1969-71 he was the Vice-President of the Toronto branch of the Ukrainian Students Union of Canada, after which he served three years on the SUSK National Executive . He was also one of the founders of the Prairie Committee of the Ukrainian Community Development Committee (UCDC) established by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which functioned for four years between 1981-84 and subsequently resulted in the creation of the Alberta and Saskatchewan UCC Provincial Councils.
He has worked extensively as a Canadian Specialist on Canada Ukraine Legislative and Intergovernmental Projects (CULIP); Policy Advice for Reform (PAR) Projects in Ukraine; and CIDA programs managed by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and the Canadian Bureau of International Education (CBIE). Since 1998 he has participated in a series of Canadian assistance initiatives in Ukraine, including the following endeavours: 1) “Creating Policy and Legislative Mechanisms to Develop National Culture and Mass Media” (1998-2002); 2) “Reforming the Public Broadcasting (Radio and Television) Sector (2002); 3) “Promoting a Legislative Framework for Minorities in Ukraine” (2003); 4) “Conceptual Principles of National Ethnic Policy: Practice and Theory” (2004-05); 5) “Developing a Policy of National Consolidation” (2005-2006); and 6) conducting “Evaluation Seminars and Round Tables Related to the Closing of CBIE’s Policy Advice for Reform Program in Ukraine” (May 2006).
Most recently, in 2013 he accompanied Dr. Lloyd Axworthy, the President of the University of Winnipeg, on a visit to Ukraine where Dr. Axworthy received an honorary doctorate from Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. While there, they signed a Memorandum of Understanding with four universities in Ukraine for joint programs and exchanges for faculty and students, also creating an entrance scholarship for students from Ukraine to study at the University of Winnipeg.
