AB in Hungary

Mosonmargyarovar is a town of about 33.000 people in the very north-western part of Hungary in the Movar region. Atlantic Bridge work in this region started with a short visit from John in 2002 when he was looking for schools who could host New Zeeland Maori artist, Steve Apirana. The success of Steve’s tour opened up more possibilities for building bridges in schools. The English departments were very keen to cooperate with us and bring native English speakers to their schools.

The English department of the Kossuth Gimnazium became our ally, but not until they first confronted us about being a Christian organization and possibly ‘indoctrinating’ their youth with Christianity. When it was clear to them that we were an open group, yet clear about our faith, they welcomed us more and more each year. Teachers Barbara and Timea took several teams of students to the International Youth Festival in the summer of 2003. And from then on a group of youth from this region attended our festival every year.

In the spring of 2006 the Kossuth Gimnazium welcomed a team of 20 Americans from an evangelical United Methodist church in PA to their school for a whole week. In the summer of 2007 the reciprocal exchange took place when 17 students and teachers from Movar travelled to Marshallton PA.

And the friendship with the teachers and administration at this school just keeps getting better. As an English-speaking international organization, we have much to offer the schools in this region. These English departments will be our focus as we increase the bridges in this region in the coming years.

The link with churches in Movar is our greatest challenge. Early on, we discovered that youth in the church were almost totally absent. And whereas we prefer to partner with various churches, we have been welcomed primarily by the Baptist church. The Lutheran and Calvinist churches have hardly any young people and no means of finding them. So we have a rather unique situation in this region where young people are enthusiastic, but the churches are not able to provide leadership.

The partner region of Marshallton, PA has a strong Regional Support Team based in the United Methodist Church. Their next step in building bridges to young people in Movar is to develop a Regional Support Team, hopefully with members from various churches and schools. We also want to find a western European partner for our Trilateral Partnership, either from England, the Netherlands or Germany. Our goal is to have a functioning Regional Support Team by the end of 2008 and 60 Bridgebuilders by the end of 2009.