The Hungarian Purist Award – Sándor Balogh: There’s no business without culture

Sándor Balogh, the president of the African-Hungarian Union (AHU) and the founder of Hungarian Trade & Cultural Centre (HTCC) was awarded with the Hungarian Purist Award. He talked about the year of 2015, his plans and faith.

Globoport.hu writes that he works a lot on preserving the Hungarian language throughout Africa. They assemble former Hungarian students who once studied here and still speak the language and want to pass it on. In HTCC they try to gratify the demand of learning Hungarian by organising screenings, language courses and giving out Hungarian books.

Sándor Balogh dedicates the money that comes with the prize, to pay language exams for 20 people in Szerencs, to help other 20 students conquer the world, and to help another 20 students in overcoming their fear of talking to foreigners.

He believes that preserving the national language is a very important task in today’s world. It gets harder and harder with the development of technology, the simplification of languages and the spreading of English. “National languages might disappear and this is something we have to prevent. We need to focus on this since it is easy to lose a language. People read so little, everything is visualised” he told globoport.hu

He firmly believes that there is no business without knowing each other’s cultures. In Africa and Asia businessmen have to know each other, they are friends. AHU wants them to know our culture so we could bring in Hungarian market, products.

In November, a delegation led by Dr. Miklós Seszták, the Minister of National Development, visited Uganda as part of Hungary’s new southern opening programme. “I think it went very well, several businesses were done and many people realised that Africa is not the black continent you should be afraid of, anymore” said the president.

The president is really proud of their three medical missions which made it possible for nine doctors to visit Africa this year. They cured about 11 thousand patients. This is a big number in itself, but a small number compared to the population of Africa. But this is what we can do and it is still a lot.

AHU has a lot of plans for the next year. They want to expand the support of children; they want to reach even more children than they do now. They are also planning to establish schools of their own and AHU Health Centres where Hungarian doctors will work and teach locals.

Regarding HTCC plans, they want to start cultural programmes that will go from house to house. They want to open new centres in regions which cannot be reached by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They are also planning to open two HTCC in Asia and one in South-America, but let the exact countries stay a secret for now.

Source: www.globoport.hu

Photo: www.globoport.hu

Copy editor: bm

Source: http://www.globoport.hu/