How a billionaire, an astronaut and a writer were making "Zavtra" (ukr. "Tommorow")

One of the most interesting non-political (hurray!) events was held yesterday. The Victor Pinchuk Foundation held awarding ceremony of Zavtra.UA Program Scholars.

"Zavtra.UA" is the first Ukrainian privately sponsored program aimed at providing support to gifted youth. It is being implemented at the expense of private funds and is a part of numerous projects implemented by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation in the field of education and science.

The best 200 students from all over Ukraine were awarded a monthly scholarship of $100, which is not bad compared to the amount of the state monthly scholarship.

The awarding ceremony was held at the base of the Antonov Science and Technical Complex. Mr. Pinchuk invited many renowned personalities to take part in the event.

To begin with, there was one of the 20 Ukrainians to perform a spacewalk. Heidemarie Martha Stefanyshyn-Piper is an American Naval officer and a NASA astronaut. Of Ukrainian-American extraction, Stefanyshyn-Piper graduated in 1980 from what was then the all-girls Derham Hall High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, and holds Bachelor of Science and Master's degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT

The second symbol-guest was a worldwide known Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho, a wise man of accessible forms who is telling about realization of dreams in his novels. According to Victor Pinchuk, the destiny of  Paulo Coelho demonstrates that it is very important not to fall when confronted with problems, because this writer, born in Argentina,  lived hard his youth years and managed to survive through numerous problems including prison and drugs and eventually became one of the most popular contemporary writers".

The event was also attended by the Director of the Institute for Physics, being the chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Zavtra.UA Scholarship Program, Yaroslav Yatskiv; the first astronaut of the independent Ukraine, Leonid Kadeniuk; Ukrainian writer Andriy Kurkov; design manager of Antonov Science and Technical Complex, Peter Balabuyev and the founder of the Foundation, Victor Pinchuk.

Success Formulae 

Just before the awarding ceremony, there was held a press conference at which the organizers of the Scholarship Program shared their thoughts on successful holding of the first contest and plans for the future. VIP-guests learned what the words "Ukraine" and "Mriya" meant. ("Mriya" - The An-225 Mriya is a strategic airlift transport aircraft that was built by Antonov in 1980s, and is the world's largest flying airplane ever built by the most commonly accepted measure [1], maximum gross takeoff weight. There is only one Mriya and another one is being assembled. Mriya means "dream" (inspiration) in Ukrainian.

The spearhead of the event, Victor Pinchuk was in good humour though a bit exited. There is no wonder, indeed, because he was the one involved in high-profile political and economic scandals who had farmed out the national giant company Kryvorizhstal - one of the most important businesses in Ukraine and a globally important steel producer. He is now trying to distance himself from politics and to approve himself as not a "former kuchmist", "oligarch", and the like, he is now trying to straddle a difficult road of patronship of arts. Patronship of arts is a noble activity, indeed, however our people are distrustful towards philanthropists and it servers them right in most of the cases.

The organizers have indeed dispelled all doubts as for fairness and impartiality of the contest. According to Yaroslav Yatskiv the jury did not know whose papers it was checking (names and surnames were replaced by numbers). Yatskiv said the following "I was called and asked whether it was possible to influence anything. Nevertheless, I kept on saying to those people that - first of all, I did not want to do anything and secondly if I had wanted to do anything I simply couldn't have done anything because everything was well thought out. Here are the points. Here is the threshold of the points with all 200 hundred winners. Here are the names of people who did the checking. They were checking not the students but their scientific papers. They have assessed the work performed by a student".

Moreover, according to the organizers, they did not even look though the papers during the short listing phase. "It was done by corresponding experts", - said Yatskiv.

Victor Pinchuk said that the concept of the contest primarily consisted in success in the broadest sense of this word. That is why, according to Pinchuk, apart from the quality of the students' papers, the jury also took into proper consideration a communicating ability for another 25% of the total points might be obtained.

The Ukrainian billionaire also mentioned one more aspect of success that unfortunately could not be measured by any points. "Well, everybody says that success is a tiny part of a talent attached to a huge part of hard work. To my mind, there is one more small though obligatory share of luck"; - this is how Pinchuk described his own pattern of success.

Heidemarie Martha Stefanyshyn-Piper also added in Ukrainian that "it's obvious that in order to succeed one has to have the qualities Victor has just mentioned, but one cannot success without having a dream. Even if a person a talented, working without a dream he or she will never succeed".

What Pinchuk and Coelho are dreaming of?

A Korrespondent magazine journalist asked Victor Pinchuk whether he ever dreamt of flying into space. After all, space tourism has been rapidly developing and the Ukrainian billionaire may undoubtedly afford to pay for such a fascinating trip to the orbit.

"You know, as a child I had been dreaming of becoming a test pilot. I have never thought of a space flight. However, as far as I know, today space flight are meant only for one space tourist. So, when there are two seats, my wife and myself will probably6 try it", said the owner of Interpipe's orbits.

Paulo Coelho was very late for the press conference due to the flight delay. However, he finally arrived. His address to the journalists consisted of two parts because official part of the event had just begun. Nevertheless, the writer greeted everyone present, expressing his happiness that this was his second time in Ukraine. According to Coelho, he and Pinchuk became friends during his first visit to Ukraine. "This time, - pointed out Coelho, - I have arrived here with no qualms because I believe that today's event is a landmark one. In a situation when many people are discussing issues on how to protect our planet and that our Earth's eco-system desperately needs protection, we often forget that everything starts on the mental level. I am really glad that the goal of this contest is to assist young people to progress in different fields of science. Because they are the future of the mankind!"

During yesterday's event, Coelho also said that in one of his next books he was going to touch upon Chernobyl subject. As he said it was not going to be a core subject of the novel however, it would be one of its important elements. In general, Coelho gets lots of impressions from his trips to Ukraine. "Though I am not writing a book about Ukraine, Ukraine has written a book in my heart already", - said the writer, becoming quite lyrical over the issue.

To each according to his deserts

The awarding ceremony was held in a huge hanger, under a wing of "Mriya" An-124 aircraft, being under assembly. The organizers did not fail to explain that "mriya" in Ukrainian meant "dream" (inspiration). However, this explanation sounded a bit clumsy during a contest named "Zavtra.UA". I also sounded a bit clumsy within the context of wishes to live and work for the benefit of Ukraine, articulated by Russian-speaking organizers of the contest. The hymn of the contest in the Russian language also seemed to sound clumsy.

However, it was nice that during the awarding ceremony of the students' specialized groups, each of them delivered address to the guests and organizers. So one of them sang, though quite clumsy, a Ukrainian version of the hymn, and the other one, consisting of art students, read out a long ode that was written so nicely and grammatically accurate that it turned out to be a beautiful closing of the ceremony.

When speaking in Russian about the issue pertaining to the Ukrainian language I'd like to rebuke Victor Pinchuk mildly. In fact, he is, willing or not, the founder of the national scholarship program, which means he is expected to set a good example for the future intellectual elite of the country... it is never too late to learn, Mister Pinchuk. Please learn Ukrainian and teach in Ukrainian!

It was as if in confirmation to this request, at the end of official part of the event, a singer, Alexander Ponomarev sang an old song of "Skryabin" Band containing so familiar lines.

"Do not feel ashamed 'cause this is your land

Do not feel ashamed 'cause this is Ukraine

................................................

 It's not your fault that your are a son of your father

The trouble is that you are not capable of being the one..."

One can hardly say anything more beautifully and expressly.

"Verdancy" issues

I had a chance to communicate with the scholarship holders during buffet supper. In their turn, they had a chance to talk to and shake hands with the organizers and guests. 

After I'd spoken to the students, I did capture the truth as for fair play of the contest, and much to my astonishment there was nothing that might have given any ground to suspect that the contest had been conducted unfair. 

It appears that while the two Victors are wrestling for political clout, the third Victor is gradually dealing with future minds (he makes not secret that it's beneficial for him to employ most of them eventually). In addition, such an activity ensures the "capitalist" a public protection against numerous enemies hungry for his "capital". 

The only thing I got perplexed with was why there was shortfall of participants selected from the leading universities of the country provided that the contest's conditions envisaged quite a small number of participants (about 40 persons). It's a pity, but many talents seem not have been informed how to earn some money with the help of their "brains" or they simply have to earn where they are able to earn even more. Moreover, it's really great when work facilitates development of a personality, however, in most of the cases routine of earning money suppresses talents striving to the Sun. 

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