Lviv is getting ready for the 100th anniversary of Plast
The members of the Lviv stanytsia (regional units) of the National Scout Organization Plast have properly marked the beginning of the new scouting year. The celebration started with a service at the Eucharist Church, where the members of Plast thanked for the active camp summer and got a blessing for the activity in the upcoming year. The celebration continued at the Rynok Square with an action DomiNATsIA, when 200 plastuns (members of Plast) aged 6 to 35, laid out Ukraine’s biggest trident (12 meters high and 7.5 meters wide) on the pavement in front of the city council’s building.
“The action is aimed at popularizing of the national symbols,” executive head of the Lviv stanytsia Mykhailo Hnyp explained, “We made the composition of 25 parts, where instead of traditional domino dots we painted the coats of arms of over 550 cities, towns, and villages of Ukraine.”
“This is a nationwide event,” an organizer of the project, Khystyna Mulyk, added, “It has already taken place in Kyiv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi, and Nikopol. But our common purpose is to symbolically unite all Ukrainians, in spite of their place of residence.”
The members of Plast promised that DomiNATsIA would not end in Lviv, but it will continue to travel across Ukrainian cities where Plast organizations are operating. In particular, it will embrace the central and eastern regions of the country. They emphasize that the event is only a stroke in the grandiose program of preparations to the celebration of Plast’s 100th anniversary next summer.
As a reminder: Plast was established in Lviv in 1911, four years after the English Robert Baden-Powell founded the scouting movement. On April 12, 1912, the Lviv plastuns took an oath for the first time. The founders of the organization include a natural history professor, Dr. Oleksander Tysovsky, Ivan Franko’s son, pedagogue and writer Petro Franko, and Ivan Chmola, a sotnyk of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen. The word “plast” is an equivalent to English “scout,” and is derived from the word “plastuns,” a historical name for Cossack scouts.
