His Beatitude Sviatoslav presented prizes to the winners of the interactive child contest Oy khto, klhto, Mykolaya liubyt [Oh, who, who loves St. Nikolas?]

As we reported earlier three children from Ternopil region won the contest: Sviatoslav Chaykivsky from the village Pihorodne, Sophia Fanok, age 6, from Skala Podilska and Dmytro Maydanyk from Chortkiv.

All three winners sang a song of their choice at the brunch. They, of course, picked Christmas carols.

After the young performers charmed the audience with their songs, the Church Head presented them with symbolic gifts —icons and gave them his Apostolic blessing.

As Rev. Ihor Yatsiv, head of UGCC Department of Information noted this contest was the first attempt of the organization to run an interactive voting on UGCC internet resources.  The organizers are convinced that such a competition praising God is in demand and needed, since the Church is rich in talents.  According to the Organizing Committee the child interactive contest  Oh, who, who loves St. Nikolas? will  become a good yearly tradition.   Even more so, the novel beginning of the UGCC media resource will have even larger continuation.  “Now we are preparing another – this time not a child contest -- interactive song contest of singing Church talents.”  Rev. Ihor said that it would be announced within the next few weeks.

Note that on November 9^th the UGCC media center announced the child interactive contest of spiritual songs. Entries included spiritual poetry and spiritual songs which were recorded on ugcc.tv site by children up to 12 years old.  The interactive contest voting lasted until December 18^th.  Results were based on the votes which were received by the UGCC media center  as well as on Facebook by midnight of that day.  The  contests entrees can still be viewed on the site with the  voting results – now no longer as a matter of contest but as gratitude to the young performers.

UGCC Department of Information