Back from Ukraine and 27 Month in the Peace Corps,
She Saw Peaceful Revolution
by Mary Camper-Titsingh

Carole Kennedy is back on Roosevelt Island. She’s returned from 27 months of service with the Peace Corps in independent democratic Ukraine. She says the Orange Revolution, which took place during her stay in the former constituent republic of the Soviet Union, was the most dramatic and exciting highlight of that period.

Ukraine’s 2004 presidential election was declared null and void by the country’s Supreme Court and a run-off election was mandated. The incumbent prime minister’s "Blue" party was accused of foul play, vote rigging and intimidation. The opposition "Orange" party’s candidate, Victor Yushenko, ran on a platform favoring a turn to the West and joining the European Union. He won the run-off election.

Though Peace Corps members were not allowed to make comments one way or the other and were required to be in by dark, Kennedy found the street demonstrations "spectacular and generally non-violent. People wore orange ribbons and tied them on door knobs, lamp posts, and tree branches. There was great pressure to vote. The run-off elections were seen as an opportunity to make a democratic choice after years of Russian domination."

The town where Kennedy was stationed after several months of training and learning to speak "survival Russian" was Poltava, an industrial center in a rich agricultural region of east-central Ukraine. It was also one of the principal centers of Ukrainian literature and the home of Nikolai Gogol, the renowned novelist and playwright.

As the retired president of a wholesale costume jewelry business in NYC, Kennedy was uniquely qualified to train small entrepreneurs. She was assigned to an organization that went to small villages and towns to inform their mayors and entrepreneurs what their legal rights and responsibilities are. Encouragement was especially provided for small business owners who are women.

The Peace Corps also provided her with grant money for workshops on human trafficking, a very serious problem for the one in five Ukrainians, especially young women, who work outside the country. With another grant Kennedy established an organization to care for orphans.

"Our tax money that supports the Peace Corps and USAID is money well spent and carefully monitored," she said. "There are no fifty-dollar hammers. Expenditures are stringent and documented. I was very, very impressed; our government is doing a spectacular job and is training Ukrainians to carry on when the Peace Corps leaves."

After retiring from her business in 2002, she followed a friend’s suggestion that she take a look at the Peace Corps application available on the Internet. She was chosen even though only six percent of Peace Corps applicants over the age of 30, mostly teachers, are accepted. Her experience developing a small business was just right for the Peace Corps’ work in assisting and developing small business entrepreneurs.

She lived alone in a pleasant, though small, apartment in Poltava and shopped at nearby open markets. She attended two or three symphony concerts each week and enjoyed the beautiful choral singing, a specialty in Ukraine.

She found the people of Poltava very polite. "The people in Ukraine killed me with kindness," she said. All through her 27 months stay, she indulged her wanderlust, traveling, mostly by train or bus, during the 48 days of vacation allotted. She visited Kiev, Lvov, Yalta, Odessa on the Black Sea, and also went to Egypt, Poland and Turkey.

"It was a great experience," she says.