"People's feelings connect countries stronger than economy"

Today if the World Day of Cultural Diversity so Euroradio decided find out how Belarusians understood the meaning of the concept "cultural diversity". Our searches led us to the Belarusian Association of Friendship and Cultural Connections with Foreign Countries. We suggest to your attention the short version of the conversation.

The full version of the conversation is available here: 120521 Ivanova_site.mp3

Euroradio: The comments in the social networks claim that there cannot be inter-state friendship. However, is it possible that such friendship may show in some way?..

Nina Ivanova: This is a great mistake as friendship is the main thing that unites us. Trading-economic connections, investments, projects - all these are important but people's feelings towards each other are built not just for a day or even a year. 37 associations of friendship with separate countries are members of our Association of Friendship. Some of them have worked for 50 years - several generations have been involved in this friendship. If you love the people, if you are interested in their culture and traditions, you try to find out more about these people. If you can underline this when you speak with a representative of these people - this causes great respect to you, and to all Belarusian people, whom you represent. 

Euroradio: How did the Association of Friendship and Cultural Connections between peoples appear?

Nina Ivanova: In 1926, our national intelligentsia, in the first place, Yanka Kupala and Yakub Kolas, the foremother of our Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Belarusian Culture created a civil association "Belarusian Association of Friendship", so that the world could find out about Belarus, and the members of the Association could popularize the culture and traditions of other countries in Belarus. Since the very beginning, the Association started cooperation with numerous civil organizations of the world. We are proud that such outstanding figure as Rabindranat Tagor once visited Belarus upon our invitation. Many other outstanding people also visited Belarus. But the most important thing is that we could show Belarus to the world through our organization. All famous mature creative collectives were ever send abroad through our Association. 

Euroradio: What does the Association do?

Nina Ivanova: I a word, we are realizing 4 programs at the moment. These are, firstly, exchange of cultural achievements: parties in the House of Friendship, dedicated to different countries, different traditions, cultures, famous people and events; exhibitions, creative reports, parties which are held in the languages of countries we are friends with. We also manage to do something in the foreign countries, through our partners. Thus, we celebrated the 130th anniversary of Yanka Kupala and Yakub Kolas, the 120th anniversary of Maxim Bahdanovich - the majority of our foreign partners held events dedicated to these dates. This is our key program. We also work with twin-cities. The Belarusian Association of Twin Cities works in our framework. We help to find partners abroad, conduct consultations. The third program is a humanitarian one. We receive medical equipment for our medical establishments, send children for recreation. And the fourth program is the youth one. This is mostly upgrading the linguistic qualification of our specialists. We also work a lot with our students, take into consideration the interests of our youth.

Chairwoman of the Belarusian Association of Friendship between Countries Nina Ivanova. Source: belta.by