Antoine Arjakovsky: Trust and Responsibility Develop Philanthropy

This year's social week was held under the motto "Trust. Responsibility. Philanthropy." The meetings of the week dealt with various aspects of understanding trust, responsibility, and philanthropy, and gathered representatives of state, private, and public sectors from Ukraine and abroad.  The guests of the social week discussed themes of cooperation between territorial communities and the church regarding the development of social initiatives, charity, volunteerism, and the role of modern mass media in these processes, etc.

The moderators of the round tables paid attention to the importance of forming trust by understanding social initiatives aimed to meet specific public needs. And this is achieved when parties assume responsibility for their decisions and acts. An assistant professor of the Department of Sociology and Social Work of the Lviv Polytechnic National
University, Liliia Klos, stressed the importance of developing a mechanism of interbranch responsibility for social health.

The director of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies of the Ukrainian Catholic University, Antoine Arjakovsky, noted that trust and responsibility are the values that develop
philanthropy. He also reminded the participants about the good experience of communication with international guests, particularly, the director of the World Bank for Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova, Martin Reizer, who proposes a number of reforms for Ukraine in the social area. Arjakovsky mentioned as a positive step the presentation of the educational program of the "Basics of Christian Ethics," which will facilitate the understanding of Christianity in Ukrainian schools.

A pastor, advisor on European matters of the Mission of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, Helen Zordrager, spoke about the importance of the memory of the past in the way to a peaceful future. She used as an example the opening of the exhibition "Forgotten World," which is about the life of Jews in eastern Europe during the Nazi terror. "We must build the history not only on the basis of the collective memory but also remember the past through the history of individual people," said the pastor.