In Bellevue, Washington, a grassroots cultural center shows how one immigrant’s determination to teach her children Ukrainian became a community hub for hundreds
When Oksana Krivizuk arrived in Washington State in 2015 with two small children, she faced a familiar immigrant dilemma: how to pass on her language and culture in a place where neither seemed to exist outside of church walls.
Within a month, she started her own school.
“We simply decided we were on our own,” Krivizuk said. Her children were five and three years old. The only Ukrainian-language programs she could find near her home were church-based, taught through religious Sunday school. As someone who values Christian principles but doesn’t practice religion institutionally, she wanted something different.
“School should be separate from church or religion,” she said. “It’s a child’s choice, or a family decision. Families have different backgrounds, so we wanted a space that gave kids freedom.”
What began with eight children meeting in borrowed library rooms has grown into Toloka, a thriving Ukrainian cultural center that now serves 80 students and hosts wine tastings, art exhibitions, and fashion shows alongside traditional folk festivals.
The transformation reflects a broader shift in the Ukrainian diaspora in America. As waves of new immigrants have arrived, first following the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea, then after the 2022 full-scale invasion, they are building institutions that look different from the ones their predecessors created generations ago.
FINDING SPACE, BUILDING COMMUNITY
For years, the school moved between public libraries on Saturday mornings. Krivizuk and other parents taught language for one hour, then activities such as history, geography, embroidery, crafts for another. Finding consistent space was the constant challenge.
“You can have initiative, but it’s very difficult to rent something for just two hours on Saturdays,” she said. “Community centers are usually fully booked.”
In 2023, Krivizuk asked the local Ukrainian association to help find permanent space. They didn’t respond, so she and a small group took matters into their own hands. They signed a lease, forming a nonprofit board, and opening Toloka’s doors by September. The formal governance structure took a year to solidify, but the community showed up. Today, despite their independence, Toloka collaborates regularly with the association.
Toloka now occupies a rented building in Bellevue with a monthly lease of $8,500. The name means “collective work” in Ukrainian, evoking the tradition of neighbors gathering to help with harvests or building projects.
The center’s monthly budget runs around $11,000 including teacher salaries. Krivizuk insists on paying educators $30 an hour to make the project sustainable. The school accepts every child regardless of ability to pay, charging an average donation of $60 per month for two hours of instruction.
“The point is not profit,” she said. “It’s to keep the kids in school.”
BEYOND LANGUAGE LESSONS
Students range from three-and-a-half to seventeen years old. Classes meet every Saturday, divided into small groups of no more than twelve children per teacher. Ukrainian textbooks, Krivizuk discovered, don’t work well for children growing up in American schools. She and her teachers develop their own materials, experimenting each year.
“Two hours is not enough for fluency,” she acknowledged. “But it’s enough for kids to understand, read, write, and – most importantly to us – be proud that they are Ukrainian.”
Many students come from families that speak Russian at home or have already switched to English. For them, those two hours on Saturdays matter in ways that transcend vocabulary.
Daniel Galiant, a Ukrainian American from Washington State, said he grew up with a complicated relationship to his own language. “Growing up in a Ukrainian evangelical family, my sense of being Ukrainian often felt overshadowed as Russian dominated the language of school, church circles, and everyday life. There were few chances to study or truly use Ukrainian, so it stayed mostly in small moments at home.”
Krivizuk’s own sixteen-year-old son, who started at the school when it launched, speaks mostly English now. Like many teenagers, he has gone through phases of questioning why he needs Ukrainian. The school tries to make the answer compelling through festivals, celebrations, and connections to other young people.
“We now have around 30 teenagers,” Krivizuk said. “Which is amazing.”
A NEW MODEL FOR THE DIASPORA IN THE NORTHWEST
What sets Toloka apart from older Ukrainian organizations is its approach to community building. Rather than focusing primarily on commemorating historical figures like the poet Taras Shevchenko, whose portrait still hangs in Toloka’s library, the center hosts modern fundraisers, art shows, and social events designed to appeal to younger Ukrainian Americans.
“Older groups cling to traditional events,” Krivizuk said. “Younger volunteers bring fresh ideas – fashion shows, wine tastings, modern exhibitions.”
“Having a place to come together as a community has long been a desire for Ukrainian Americans in the Greater Seattle area,” said Katerina Sedova, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.
“Diasporas of every generation develop their own version of Ukrainian culture… but culture is a living and evolving reflection of lived experience. Physical spaces like Ukrainian Centers give shape to that experience and help bridge the gap between Ukrainians in the US and those in Ukraine, especially in wartime.”
She added that these centers also help introduce Ukraine to the broader American public through food, film, and shared cultural events – “the last three feet of diplomacy,” as she put it.
The center survives without grants, relying instead on patrons who cover about 40 percent of the budget, ticket sales from events, space rentals, and two major festivals each year. Summer months, when school is on break, are the hardest financially. The Toleka website lists its motto as: “A vibrant space where the Ukrainian language, art, and contemporary perspectives unite people in an open community.”
Yet building that unity across Washington’s Ukrainian community remains an uphill battle. Vitaliy Piekhotin, a Ukrainian American evangelical living in Federal Way, said his own experience shows how uneven the diaspora’s evolution can be.
Earlier this year, he invited ten local bishops and pastors to a Ukrainian flag-raising ceremony at Federal Way City Hall, asking them to come and pray for Ukraine and the United States. “None came,” he said. “It’s hard for me to say evangelicals are really advocating for Ukraine outside their church buildings.”
In a social media group of 260 evangelical ministers, he posted an invitation to an association meeting in Bellevue, asking if any church leaders could join and share stories from their families or friends. Almost no one responded.
For Piekhotin, the message is clear: private sympathy does not always translate into public action. “Toloka-style centers need to be in every city,” he said. “That’s why we started the Ukrainian Community of Federal Way – to support Ukraine, to support Ukrainians in the US, and to be part of the community where we live.”
He believes these centers succeed because they connect culture, service, and civic engagement – something churches, he argues, have struggled to do consistently.
“When funds are short, it’s stressful,” Krivizuk admitted. “We gather the team and say, ‘We’re short this month, let’s make something happen.'”
About twenty deeply engaged volunteers keep Toloka running, each bringing their own projects and audiences. The governance structure reflects this: only projects that contribute at least 20 percent of the rent get board membership, ensuring decisions are made by those who rely most heavily on the space.
“Younger generations dislike hierarchy,” Krivizuk explained. “They want flexibility and projects that interest them, not strict rules.”
LOOKING AHEAD
Krivizuk plans to step down as board chair within three years, believing that leadership must rotate to keep organizations alive. But she’s already thinking about bigger questions, particularly how to translate the Ukrainian community’s growing numbers into political influence.
“We have many voters but few elected officials,” she said. “We live our own diaspora life instead of trying to shape the environment around us.”
Reading about other Ukrainian organizations in Washington State and across the country, she realized how disconnected different groups remain from each other. Religious communities prioritize faith over national identity.
Eddie Priymak, a Ukrainian American scholar from Washington State studying religion in the Ukrainian diaspora, explains that Ukrainian evangelicals aren’t a monolithic group. “Most evangelicals remain insulated within their particular denominational networks – whether Baptist, Pentecostal, or Charismatic – and have limited interaction with the broader Ukrainian diaspora,” he said.
That fragmentation has deep historical roots. Even within evangelical communities, Pentecostals and Baptists rarely intermingled in the diaspora. While Russia’s invasion has created new opportunities for interreligious advocacy, and prompted many Russian-speaking churches to create Ukrainian-language schools, Priymak notes these efforts have largely been driven by clergy, with most congregants remaining distant from broader civic engagement.
Still, Toloka exists as proof that something new is possible. What began as one mother’s determination not to lose her language has become a space where hundreds of families maintain connections to Ukraine, and to each other.
“A Ukrainian house only exists if people actually need it,” Krivizuk said. “If the community stops supporting us, there’s no point in keeping the doors open.”
For now, people keep coming. Every Saturday, children fill the classrooms. Every month, new events draw crowds. The space remains full of life, sustained by the collective work its name promises.
