Plans for 2009
Ágoston Sándor Alapítvány, our public benefit charity foundation has been
dedicated to support Hungarian minority communities, pre-eminently the
remote ones living in dispersion in the Carpathian Basin outside Hungary –
among them many reformed congregations, for nearly twenty years. In a
mediate way, however, we also wish to enhance the lives of those
nationalities who surround them. With the financial and human resources we
have, we are backing the activity of NGOs and charities.
We support kindergartens, schools, orphanages and other associations in
underprivileged settlements financially and with our active personal
presence. Every year, we organise more than ten 3-10-day trips, when young
people from Hungary get acquainted with the life of communities who are at
disadvantage in their society. Among our volunteers there are students,
theology students, teachers, special educators for the handicapped, doctors,
engineers, architects, archaeologists, economists, musicians, etc.
Only last year...
- We tried our best to meet the demands set by our basic goal to support
the members of the Reformed Church living in dispersion. Thus we continued
with our week-end projects for theology students: we organized eight such
trips last year.
- We worked in the mixed nationality village of Berzéte, to help
convert an old school building into a new community facility containing
an orphanage, a special workplace for handicapped people, and a new youth
centre.
- We made contact with the inhabitants of Módos, in Vajdaság, who have
more or less managed to renew their homes after they had been severely
struck by the floods some years ago. We are working there to create
a community centre in a building we selected last year, and which is
going to have various cultural functions: library, cultural events (folk
music, concerts, etc.), Hungarian language courses and related programs, as
well as church services at weekends.
- We went on with our traditional conservation camps to save protected
monuments. Last year we helped in the reconstruction works of the
really dilapidated art relic church of Őraljaboldogfalva, with its
800-year-old unique wall paintings, and that of the Sárd, another church
building of exceptional beauty. In the preceding years, apart from doing
conservation works on other historic monuments, we took part in building the
village museum in Visk, to facilitate the exhibition of
landscape architecture and the treasures of ethnography there. This
activity was also appreciated by the profession of architects in Hungary,
and we have been invited to lecture at prestigious exhibitions and
conferences ever since.
- Right now we support seven orphanages in Transylvania, Rumania, and
one in Transcrarpathia, Ukraine. These are church institutions, but we
do not make any distinction according to denomination. Rumania and the
Ukraine are in great need of these institutions, since the network of social
services in these areas is hardly or not at all organised by the state.
Besides constant financial support, we make efforts to meet various local
needs for equipment and facilities from toothbrush and washing machine to
covering the cost of very expensive medical treatments.
This way we are able to better the living standards of many poor and
multiply handicapped children. In the same manner we also support the
building and provision of schools and kindergartens in the handicapped
settlements of these regions.
We plan the following projects this year:
- Like in former years, we are planning to organize as many week-end
projects for theology-students among dispersed Hungarians and
dispersed Reformed Church communities in Slovakia, Ukraine, Rumania, Serbia
and Croatia as possible.
- We wish to go on supporting the completion of the 85% ready
school-kindergarten in Felőr for Hungarian children dispersed in the
region. In the past years we gave several million forints to build the fence
of the kindergarten and to install a heating system in the school. This year
we are planning a week’s volunteer-camp to arrange the environment, and form
the school-yard and garden.
- Supporting orphanages abroad is our top priority. Since the financial
support of so many institutions is far beyond our means, we are trying to
involve further sponsors from Hungary to support the orphanages in
Zilah, Zsobok, Holtmaros, Tusnádfürdő, Gyimesbükk, Szováta, and Sámuel
Foundation in Beregszász. Our personal presence is the guarantee that
all support will go to improve the living standards of the most needy
children.
- Hungarian schools, old peoples’ homes and emergency children’s services
in Transcarpathia are the poorest institutions of all the Carpathian Basin.
For this reason we would like to actively help with the organisation and
building of an emergency home for unmarried young mothers and their babies
in Beregszász. It is part of the plan to do volunteer work during the
course of a summer camp.
- As in the creation of the orphanage in Berzéte last year, likewise, we
would like to contribute to the formation of a youth centre and village
museum in Kőrös.
- We are going on with the construction works of an educational and
church centre on a former flood scene in the Temes valley in Vajdaság.
- We continue our conservation project to preserve and maintain
medieval monuments primarily in the multicultural regions of
Transylvania and Trascarpathia.
- Last but not least, like before we have taken on the financial support
of some socially handicapped students abroad, who came into our
view recently.
Our foundation is striving to make the maximum of supports available through
tenders. Also, we are entitled to raise money by accepting 1%s of personal
income tax, and we have institutions, organizations and individuals among
our supporters. With the devotion and sacrifice of our volunteers the sum of
our supports becomes multiplied as it finds its way to the often needy
members of handicapped or underprivileged communities, institutions and
settlements.
Our organization was founded by a Reformed Church theology student, who had
put aside the pennies of his scholarship abroad in 1990. Ever since, all our
activity has been done by volunteers, many times covering costs from their
own resources. None of them gets paid or in any other way refunded for their
services in foundation projects. For the past five years, as chairman of the
advisory board, I have been covering hundreds of miles in the Carpathian
Basin with my own twenty-year-old Audi 80. From early spring to late autumn
I take a monthly average of two longer trips on my own or accompanied by one
or two colleagues, and every year I organize more than ten trips or camps,
when we take a lot of young people to Hungarian communities dispersed
outside Hungary.
