Some meetings stay with you long after the screen goes dark. On October 14, 2026, thanks to the kind invitation of Tanya Grygorska, I joined an online meeting hosted by the Education Department of the National Congress of Ukrainian Associations of Italy (Національний Конгрес українських асоціацій Італії, Natsionalnyi Konhres ukrainskykh asotsiatsii Italii), moderated by Olha Knyhnytska. The guest was Nadiia Vasylchenko, a Ukrainian teacher who has made her home in Santiago, Chile.
The conversation turned on questions I have carried for years. What is it like to teach Ukrainian very far from Ukraine? Why do people from other countries choose to learn it? And how do we find them? I left with answers, with inspiration, and with a story I want to share.
Two journeys that began in 2004
Nadiia comes from Chernihiv, in northern Ukraine (Briceño, 2022). She studied at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and qualified in 2001 as a teacher of Ukrainian and Russian as foreign languages. Since then she has worked with languages in every form: translating, interpreting and teaching (Vasylchenko, n.d.-b).
She settled in Chile in 2004, first coming to work as a translator (Briceño, 2022; Vasylchenko, n.d.-b). I smiled when I read that date. In 2004 I arrived in Winnipeg with two suitcases. Two Ukrainians, two continents, the same year: each of us beginning a new life far from Ukraine and, as it turned out, each of us spending the years that followed building bridges through teaching.
Her bridge between Spanish and Ukrainian began even before Chile. In a 2019 interview, she recalled that her first official job as a newly graduated interpreter, in 2003, was guiding two visitors from Spain (Vak Contreras, 2019). Spanish and Ukrainian have walked side by side in her life for more than twenty years.
A language as an open house
Nadiia created her blog ¿Ucraniano? ¡Fácil! (Ukrainian? Easy!) to teach Ukrainian to Spanish speakers, and to gather learning techniques, her students’ experiences, and resources that make learning easier and more effective (Vasylchenko, n.d.-b). Her free online lessons walk a beginner from the Ukrainian alphabet and first phrases to personal pronouns, verb tenses and the grammar of nouns (Vasylchenko, n.d.-c).
Her YouTube channel carries the same name and the same promise. Learners find videos on grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, learning tips, and playlists that open the door to the Ukrainian world. She also hosts a Ukrainian and Spanish language club on Facebook, where learners of both languages meet and help one another (Vasylchenko, n.d.-a, n.d.-b).
What moved me most is a small line in her channel description. She invites learners to ask any question about the language, to suggest new topics, and to correct her Spanish (Vasylchenko, n.d.-a). A teacher who asks her students to correct her understands learning as something we do together. No one is too new, too slow or too far away to belong. Accessibility is the thread that runs through everything I teach, and I recognized that thread immediately in Nadiia’s classroom.
Grammar without fear
Anyone who has learned Ukrainian knows the moment when the grammatical cases (відмінки, vidminky, the seven forms a noun takes depending on its role in a sentence) arrive and many learners want to run. Nadiia meets that moment with books written in Spanish: ¡No hay caso!: Domina los casos gramaticales ucranianos, illustrated by Yana Ivashchenko, and a companion workbook of practical exercises, Casos gramaticales en ucraniano, illustrated by Fernando Ávila (Goodreads, n.d.). Pictures, practice and patience make the hardest part of the language the most welcoming.
Finding Ukraine in a grandparent’s name
One of the most touching things I found in Nadiia’s work is quiet and easy to miss. In March 2013 she wrote a short blog page explaining how Ukrainian names, patronymics and surnames work (Vasylchenko, 2013). It became a meeting place. For years, readers from Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico and beyond have written to her with a grandparent’s name, spelled the way an immigration office once wrote it, and asked: how would this be written in Ukrainian? What does it mean? Patiently, reply after reply, she gives them the Ukrainian form and its meaning, or tells them gently when a surname sounds more Polish than Ukrainian. In 2015 one reader simply thanked her for answering every comment since 2013 (Vasylchenko, 2013).
As a social worker, I know what this means. A name restored is a family story restored. For a descendant in Latin America, seeing a grandfather’s name written in Ukrainian letters can be the first step home. Nadiia does this work of memory as naturally as she teaches the alphabet.
A small community that will not be overlooked
The Ukrainian community in Chile is small. In 2022, three months into the full-scale invasion, a university report featured Nadiia among the Ukrainian women of Chile. Citing the embassy, it described a community of no more than about 400 people (Briceño, 2022). The day after the invasion began, Nadiia turned to the Facebook group of Ukrainians in Chile, and together they went to protest at the Russian embassy in Santiago. In the months that followed, the community held vigils and demonstrations and raised almost 13 million pesos through a solidarity football match, a raffle, a fair, a garage sale and a concert (Briceño, 2022). Nadiia told the reporter that their aim was love for their own country, not hatred of anyone (Briceño, 2022).
That community has grown more visible since. In April 2025, on World Book and Copyright Day, the first Ukrainian Bookshelf in Chile (Українська книжкова поличка, Ukrainska knyzhkova polychka, a shelf of Ukrainian books in a public library) opened at the library of the Las Condes cultural centre in Santiago, as part of the initiative of Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska, open to everyone, with reading clubs and film screenings planned around it (Ukrinform, 2025). A second followed in 2026 at the Gabriela Mistral Municipal Library in Ñuñoa, with books on Ukraine’s history and culture, Chilean authors in Ukrainian translation, and the works of Gabriela Mistral herself, republished in Ukrainian (Mezha, 2026).
A bookshelf may look small. It is not. It is a place where a Chilean reader can open a Ukrainian book, where a Ukrainian family can show their children that their language lives here too, and where a whole city learns that Ukraine is more than the war in the headlines.
Back to Chile
Listening to Nadiia took me straight back to Chile.
I celebrated Ukraine’s Independence Day in the Atacama, wearing my vyshyvanka (вишиванка, the embroidered Ukrainian shirt) under the deepest blue sky I have ever seen. Vicuñas grazed among the golden grass behind me, and I thought about how far a Ukrainian shirt can travel, and how at home it can feel anywhere people meet it with curiosity and kindness.
Then came Valparaíso.
The city climbs its hills in every colour imaginable, and I kept finding yellow and blue, as if Valparaíso had dressed for Ukraine. I also found a sign marking 80 years since the Winnipeg.
In 1939, Pablo Neruda, sent to Paris as consul for Spanish immigration with the backing of Chile’s President Pedro Aguirre Cerda, chartered an old French cargo ship called the Winnipeg (Memoria Chilena, n.d.). Built for about a hundred people, it sailed from Pauillac on August 4, 1939, with more than 2,000 Spanish Republican refugees and reached Valparaíso in early September (Hevia, 2019; Memoria Chilena, n.d.).
I stood beside that sign and smiled. A ship named Winnipeg, a city named Winnipeg where my Canadian life began, and the same human story: people leaving war behind and finding a country that welcomes them. Ukrainians know this story well, across every wave of our history and again today.
In Santiago and areas, new friends shared Chile’s history with me with great generosity: its hard chapters, its poets, its memory and its hope.
Two homes in one heart
Chile is also close to me through my students. Some of the social workers I have taught came from Chile and now practise in Canada. They carry two homes in their hearts, and they bring that understanding into their work with newcomers, families and communities. Every time I think of them, I think of how much Canada gains from people who know what it means to begin again.
Before this meeting, I did not know how much Ukrainian life there is in Chile. Now I know: a community that gathers, protests, raises funds and celebrates; two Ukrainian bookshelves in Santiago; and teachers like Nadiia keeping the language alive and opening it to everyone who wants to learn.
What it means to stand with Ukraine from far away
As a Canadian who was born in Ukraine, I often ask how we stand with Ukraine from far away. Nadiia gives one of the best answers I know.
You teach. You welcome. You make the language easy to love. You turn the grammar everyone fears into something learners can master. You help a stranger find a grandfather’s name in Ukrainian letters. You let your students correct your Spanish while you teach them Ukrainian. You turn being far from home into a bridge.
And that bridge reaches further than Chile. A community in Italy invited a teacher in Chile to speak, and a Canadian born in Lviv listened from Kamloops. This is what a global Ukrainian community looks like when education leads.
Дякую (diakuiu, thank you), Nadiia, for your joy, your care and your open door. Дякую, Tanya, for the invitation, and Olha and the Education Department of the National Congress of Ukrainian Associations of Italy, for bringing us together. ¡Gracias, Chile!
Learn Ukrainian with Nadiia
YouTube: ¿Ucraniano? ¡Fácil! on YouTube
Blog: ¿Ucraniano? ¡Fácil! blog
Love. Care. Share.
References
Briceño, D. (2022). A tres meses de la guerra: Las voces de las ucranianas en Chile [Reportaje]. Universidad del Desarrollo. https://comunicaciones.udd.cl/files/2022/06/Reportaje-Ucranianas-en-Chile.pdf
Goodreads. (n.d.). Nadiia Vasylchenko [Author page]. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15063908.Nadiia_Vasylchenko
Hevia, D. (2019, July 11). Desembarco del Winnipeg cumple 80 años y alistan agenda conmemorativa. La Tercera. https://www.latercera.com/culto/2019/07/11/desembarco-winnipeg-agenda/
Memoria Chilena. (n.d.). Cónsul para la inmigración española. Biblioteca Nacional de Chile. https://www.memoriachilena.gob.cl/602/w3-article-96360.html
Mezha. (2026, September 10). Ukraine opens second Ukrainian Bookshelf in Chile to promote its culture. https://mezha.net/eng/news/1439d7f2_ukraine_opens_second/
Ukrinform. (2025, April 25). У Чилі відкрили першу «Українську книжкову поличку» [Chile opens its first Ukrainian Bookshelf]. https://www.ukrinform.ua/rubric-diaspora/3985899-u-cili-vidkrili-persu-ukrainsku-knizkovu-policku.html
Vak Contreras, D. (2019, June 19). Dos chilenos y una ucraniana cuentan su historia: Yo estuve en Chernóbil. The Clinic. https://www.theclinic.cl/2019/06/19/dos-chilenos-y-una-ucraniana-cuentan-su-historia-yo-estuve-en-chernobil/
Vasylchenko, N. (n.d.-a). ¿Ucraniano? ¡Fácil! [YouTube channel]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@ucranianofacil
Vasylchenko, N. (n.d.-b). Sobre este blog. ¿Ucraniano? ¡Fácil! http://ucranianoparati.blogspot.com/p/que-aprenderas.html
Vasylchenko, N. (n.d.-c). Nadiia Vasylchenko [Presentation series of Ukrainian lessons]. SlideShare. https://www.slideshare.net/nadvas
Vasylchenko, N. (2013, March 6). Nombres y apellidos ucranianos. ¿Ucraniano? ¡Fácil! https://ucranianoparati.blogspot.com/2013/03/nombres-y-apellidos-ucranianos.html
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