Slovak Award Ceremony 2015
On 19 June the award ceremony of the Slovak History Competition took place in the Polish Institute in Bratislava. 2015 marks the 10th anniversary of the EUSTORY Competition in Slovakia.
The topic “Slovak Development cooperation in the 20th and 21st century – from INTEHELPO to SLOVAKAID” was inspired by the European Year for Development, as announced by the European Commission, and the 90th anniversary of Slovak Development Aid.
In order to make the topic more accessible and concrete, the students were also given possible sub topics such as writing about a member of their family as “builder of socialism” in countries of Asia, Africa, or South America, or the life of a family member who re-settled in a foreign country within the framework of development aid, or the histories of students who came to Slovakia on scholarships.
This year’s keynote speaker was Peter Hulenyi from the Development and Humanitarian Aid Department of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic. In his speech he focused on how Slovakia can now return the support that it has been given throughout the last twenty years to help with the development of other countries. Following his speech, the prize winner presented their works to the audience.
First prize winner, Caroline Turazová from Žiar nad Hronom, wrote about the experts of a local aluminium factory and how they supported constructing factories in third world countries, among them Vietnam and Libya.
Lucia Okániková from Žilina, the winner of the second prize, dug deeper into her family's history. Her father, an engineer, went to Algeria in 1980 after a terrible earthquake in order to help with the reconstruction of the city El Asnam. In her research work she also included a detailed description of her father’s adventurous trip to Algeria by car and ferry.
The special award for a work written in English was given to Richard Kotrč, Nikola Lisková and Natália Marčanová from Čadca. In their work "Boomerang" they looked at initiatives in Slovakia with the aim of returning the help that was given.
After the presentations the organiser used the opportunity to have an open discussion about the experiences of the participants during their research. Several students found the topic hard to approach and had difficulties getting started with their research. This valuable feedback will be taken into account for next year’s topic.
The competition partners of this round were the Slovak Commission of the UNESCO, the Nations Memory Institute and the Polish Institute in Bratislava. The grant supporting for this year’s competition was received from the European Commission grant system via the Slovak NDGO Platform.