Organization of Ukrainian Women in Brazil

Organization of Ukrainian Women in Brazil (Організація українських жінок Бразилії; Orhanizatsiia ukrainskykh zhinok Brazilii). A women’s organization in Brazil. Women who had been active in the work of the Union for Agricultural Education (KhOS) organized themselves in 1924 into women’s sections of KhOS branches in Porto União and Curitiba. Inspired by the example of the Union of Ukrainian Women in Galicia, they undertook cultural work, welfare activity, and Ukrainian Saturday school organization. After being closed down for several years in the 1940s by the Brazilian dictatorship, the group resumed activity. In 1948 they established a central organization which had four branches in 1952 when the organization became a charter member of the World Federation of Ukrainian Women's Organizations. It also started publishing a page of organizational and other news in the KhOS newspaper, Khliborob (Curitiba). In 1959 the organization adopted its present name (while retaining the KhOS affiliation), and in 1964 it organized a 40th anniversary celebration of the Ukrainian women's movement in Brazil and published Ukraïns’ke zhinotsvo u Braziliï (Ukrainian Women in Brazil). While maintaining its initial activities, the organization (450 members in 7 branches in 1987) recently has become particularly active in the promotion of Ukrainian folk arts. Presidents of the organization have included Z. Yashchynska, N. Felyk, O. Horachuk, T. Bashchyn, L. Yedyn, and O. Borushenko.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]