Hungarian visionaries restore castle and revitalize local community

Hungarian visionaries restore castle and revitalize local community

It is admirable and rare to commit yourself to a service project that may never be completed in your lifetime. In an inspiring stroke of luck, I was able to meet this caliber of visionaries in Hungary through an organization called Friends of Szádvár.

The original Hungarian members of this organization met in 2006 in a chat room for castle enthusiasts. It wasn’t long before one castle-lover issued a call to action, urging the group to utilize their passion for good. This inkling bloomed into Friends of Szádvár, a group committed to restoring the 12th-century Castle Szádvár, located in Hungary’s Aggtelek National Park near the Slovakian border. Multiple times a year, the volunteers from all different walks of life - including a youth group each summer - join together for “Castle-saving weekends.” During these times, the group clears out the undergrowth surrounding the castle and slowly transforms the abandoned area into a tourist attraction - a time-intensive endeavor some volunteers acknowledge they will never see complete, yet they are enthused to contribute what they can.

Beyond preserving the historically rich medieval site, the volunteers want the project to catalyze economic development in neighboring towns. The castle resides in one of the poorest counties in Hungary that has been plagued by closing factories and lack of opportunity. Thus, the Friends’ hope is that the castle will draw enough visitors to turn the area into a tourist destination and supply much-needed capital infusions.

To finance their project, the Friends solicit donations through GlobalGiving, an online marketplace where individuals can donate to myriad locally run campaigns around the world. Using this platform is a novel model for Eastern Europe, where most nonprofit endeavors are still solely government funded and a low-Internet penetration rate persists.

In a region where the spirit of philanthropy and volunteerism is incipient, the Friends of Szádvár are encouraging pioneers, setting an inspiring example that I hope will become widely followed in this region.

posted by MARISABEAHM on 3/ 2/2010

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