Friday, November 2, 2007

The First of November - Day of the Community Leaders

This is the theme of the show/exhibition which was unveiled yesterday for the occasion of the Day of the Community Leaders at Community Center “St.st. Cyril and Methodius.” At 12:00 in front of the community center building, students from the school “Hristo Smirnenski” and young people from folklore ensemble “Slav Boikin” put on a brief presentation for the occasion of the holiday.
The show was devoted to local community leaders – religious leaders, teachers, and cultural activists. It is an occasion for the remembering and learning about our forefathers. With this presentation we barely scratched the surface of the theme for every “honored Bulgarian,” but we supported the beginning of a more finite theme with through the collection and organization of data on the local, vigilant community leaders – our forefathers. At least, we repeatedly began asking the questions “Who is a community leader? How will we define who is sufficiently worthy of the title Community Leader?” We hope that everyone who has seen the show will understand the message we were hoping to convey through the imagery, the buildings, and the texts hung in the exposition – namely that any one of us would be able to be community leaders if we stop thinking inwardly of our own individual wishes, strictly speaking for I, and if we are selfless and contribute to the creation of the future’s history. If every one of us welcomes the responsibility of the future day as his personal responsibility, he will ensure that we have built a genuine, responsible Bulgarian nation, ready to be vigilant and work for a better tomorrow.
All those people involved in the construction of the hospital, the school, and the church after the earthquake during 1928, the people who helped to build the community center – all of them are community leaders. The people who leave something after them of course, because they possess the wish to extend and to build their history – these are community leaders.
We are exceptionally thankful to our colleague and friend Petur Turnovaliski, who collected materials from over the years and researched the history of the local population, and gave us many materials including both pictures and text. Of course we can’t forget our partners from the school and “Zombori” Press in Plovdiv, who kindly worked closely with us for our Folklore ensemble’s trip to France, and helped us now with the organization of the show for local community leaders.

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