Once again I have the privilege to provide my greetings as President and an enthusiastic volunteer for this 2007 Annual Report. To be a donor and volunteer for the Shevchenko Foundation is to participate in the exciting and personally satisfying promotion of Ukrainian culture in Canada.

Participation in our culture is a life-long experience. Thousands of Canadian schoolchildren of Ukrainian ancestry are exposed to the words of Shevchenko through our annual Shevchenko bookmark campaign, now distributed in numbers exceeding thirty thousand each year. These same children are now being given the opportunity to read great Canadian literature through the types of writing and authorship that is being promoted through the Kobzar Literary Award, the second Award of which will be presented in March 2008, in Toronto. These same schoolchildren eventually become high school and university students and will have received bursaries from the Shevchenko Foundation, have improved their speaking skills or have pursued academic ideals related to the promotion of Ukrainian culture, including its glorious history, together with the opportunity to have the Foundation assist in the publication of research, publications and other material to further their own scholarship and furthering the cause of Ukrainian culture in Canada.

Many of these future leaders of our community participate in dance groups, choral groups, theatres, festivals, summer camps and youth-centred conferences which have received financial support from the Shevchenko Foundation. The premise behind the Foundation is not only to promote Ukrainian Canadian culture in Canada, but to ensure the children of our community will have access to Ukrainian culture and explore their heritage through a vibrant expression of culture that is also supported by a strong Shevchenko Foundation dedicated to this cause. It is this passionate interest that fuels the number of volunteer hours that are put in on behalf of the Foundation across the country.

To meet our objectives and to meet the ever-rising expectations of the Ukrainian Canadian community in its beloved Shevchenko Foundation requires sound financial management, prudent investment principles and stewardship of a permanent capital fund that will sustain the operations of the Foundation into the twenty-second century. To achieve all of our goals requires building this capital fund and increasing the capacity of the Foundation to provide grants in areas where Ukrainian culture is underfunded and needs support.

There is a constant challenge of providing sufficient grants to maintain existing projects and allow them to operate at a high level and still ensure that the growth of the capital fund is not in any way compromised for those exciting and impressive projects that will appear at the Foundation's doorstep over the next generation. This past year we provided $370,517 in support and our capital fund stands at $6,708,142.

The promotion of Canadian culture is something that the Ukrainian Canadian community must take on for itself. Experience shows that no one else will assist in material funding for the promotion of our culture except ourselves. It is because the Ukrainian community has made this commitment that the Shevchenko Foundation is highly respected by all levels of government and by other foundations who operate in cultural activities in Canada and abroad.

As I have said many times before, there is no shortage of creative projects and imaginative people that constantly come to the Foundation for assistance. The only shortages that we have is the reality that the amount of funding that we can distribute in any given year is limited by our capital fund and our ability to continuously add to its development.

The annual Report goes out to our dearest and most ardent supporters and on behalf of all who are affected by the Foundation, I humbly thank you on behalf of the Ukrainian Canadian community that you have provided this support and will continue to extend an enthusiastic request to give even more assistance to allow the ever-expanding role of the Foundation to touch every household of the Ukrainian Canadian community and serve as a model organization that other communities will also emulate.

May God bless all of you who have supported the works of the Foundation and the activities of all of its beneficiaries and I look forward to your continued support in all of our endeavours.

Andriy J. Hladyshevsky, Q.C.