CACTUS - Community Action Ukrainian Style

Dear CACTUS friends,

It has been almost 6 months since the end of the CACTUS 2009 program. Since then a lot has changed, many of our fellow staffmembers went home or got jobs that will keep them away from joining us fully in the future. Others have joined or stepped up helping the program even more.

A big thing that went on after CACTUS 2009 were the community projects of CACTUS alumni. These projects were created by participants in regional groups during CACTUS 2009 and afterwards they were given mini-grants and mentors to see their project to success. Overall 7 projects were completed on various topics: helping kids with special needs, running english language trainings, conducting a career fair and visiting orphans. The projects faced some serious difficulties as people and time shortages, logistic problems and this autumn's flu epidemic. But needless to say all of the projects ended up being fantastic! The participants were so thrilled by conducting their own community initiatives and we, as their mentors, were very proud of them. The community has also had the best responses to these projects.

With that in mind, we set up working on the next year CACTUS program - the CACTUS'10 forum! Building up on the success of last year, it will happen and it will be bigger and better than before. We are going to invite 60 young community leaders from all over Ukraine and 20 from the host city of Ternopil. There they will go through training on all the in and outs of running community projects by visiting themed special workshops of their choice. In the end they will collaborate with other participants in their area and will plan advanced community projects to implement with the help of our grant fund!

We are all very excited to pull CACTUS'10 together and we expect it to have a great positive effect in Ukraine by empowering a new generation of project leaders.

Thank you again for your continued support and if you have a chance to contribute to the CACTUS'10 program - please do so, it will be very appreciated!

Warmest wishes, Illya

PS: Watch out for the official CACTUS website soon!

Wow! CACTUS has just finished a couple of days ago and I cannot convey how amazed was I by its success! The staff was amazing and pulled together to bring such an amazing experience for the kids!

Overall 56 CACTUS participants had a chance to take part in classes on Teambuilding, Country Studies, Arts and Project Planning, where they designed a project to implement when they go back home. Each of the classes was summed up by an all-CACTUS event such as the Team Quest, a Model UN session, a Talent Show and a Project Fair, where they presented their own initiatives such as holding a career fair, helping out the elderly, going to an orphanage, etc. After the fair each of the groups was able to meet with its pair of project mentors who will guide them and encourage them on the tough road to implementing their first project. All of the participants will carry their own project during the fall. We will all be eagerly following their progress!

Having experienced such positive and excited feedback from the participants it would be hard to tell them that there's going to be no CACTUS next year, especially as we have so much to teach them now that they've learned the basic of planning their own projects.

That's why we decided to have a new, advanced program next year - CACTUS '10! It will retain the basic framework but will allow for a more advanced curricula in particular on leadership and self-development and also will have a bigger emphasis on creating own projects with more time for their design and feedback. We will also increase the regional scope of our participants inviting them from all over the country and doubling the amount of out of town participants - to 60. This way we will be able to create a national network of alumni ready and eager to implement social projects together!

Thank you for all your help and support with carrying out CACTUS 2009, which proved better and more effective than anyone could have imagined! You truly made a difference for all these kids and let them know how to create their own projects, be good leaders and work together for a better future!