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2 Ukrainian NGO-graphy When I step off the minibus taxi, Maryna is there waiting for me. She looks tired, and I am grateful that she found the time to meet with me. She had already called twice this morning to postpone the interview for a few hours, so I did not know whether I would see her. It is a crisp fall day in 1999, but the late afternoon sun warms our backs as we navigate our way across several busy crosswalks toward the complex of former day care facilities where Maryna rents three rooms as quarters for her organization, Lily of the Valley. The blocks of grey and cream-colored buildings all look the same, which is why Maryna met me at the bus stop to lead the way. During a previous interview, Maryna told me about her former career as a biology researcher. She was earning an advanced degree in the early 1990s when her daughter, Olenka, then in her early teens, was diagnosed with cancer. Maryna took a leave of absence from her work and studies while Olenka had surgery and underwent treatment. Just as she was ready to resume her research, the Soviet regime fell, and Maryna’s boss advised her to “just give up.” She did. She regrets her choice at times—she was a good scientist—but she finds NGO work very satisfying and feels she has found her niche. It is only she and Olenka, as Olenka’s father left Maryna when she was pregnant; they had married young, and he was not yet cut out for family life. She says it is easier to do her activist work without having to wait on a man. She doesn’t have to “cook for or coddle anyone,”she tells me, and she has her daughter, who is now a university student, to help out with the housework. Maryna became the director of Lily of the Valley in the mid-1990s. She joined the group in conjunction with her daughter’s illness—Lily is a mutual-aid association for children suffering Chernobyl-related cancers, and their families. Responsibility for nearly all aspects of Lily’s activities falls to Maryna, no small task in an organization with a membership of 350 people. Some women members of the organization (mothers of children who are or have been sick) volunteer to help around the office, but Maryna feels guilty asking them to do much since they do not get paid and have families to take care of. I have never seen any children here, but Maryna shows me a scrapbook with pictures and newspaper clippings that highlight some of the NGO’s recent activities. Lily was originally founded to provide members with humanitarian aid in the form of medicines; medical treatment; medical trips abroad for free care in Cuba and France, for example; food, clothing, and money; as well as entertainment such as trips to the circus and theater. Under Maryna’s direction, Lily still retains its earlier functions, but she has introduced some changes that she hopes will increase the organization’s resources. She received a grant the previous year to create 64 Women’s Social Activism in the New Ukraine a resource center (also registered as an NGO, called “Mist” [Bridge]) for disability rights organizations, which includes a computer database of Ukraine’s disability-related NGOs. This means that Lily (via Mist) received two muchneeded computers. As we approach the office, Maryna fills me in on her day. She got tied up at an exhibition of Kyiv’s government social service departments and service NGOs, an event she characterizes as “a total waste of time.” I ask her why—wasn’t it a good opportunity for Kyivans to become acquainted with social services and the work NGOs are doing, if they ever need to access these services? Maryna chuckles: “It wasn’t open to the public! It was just for show [pokazukha], to ‘educate’ city officials about social services. We had all received funding from the city government, so we had to showcase our work for them. Everyone already knew one another, so we just stood around and talked the whole time.” She had dropped in on a roundtable organized to discuss disability issues. “I walked in and started laughing because all the participants were women. There wasn’t a single man! We joked that it wasn’t a roundtable; it was a mams’kyi klub, a babs’kyi klub [a mamas’ club, a broads...

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