6 / 1995
Jožko Fornazarič

Slovene Students around the World



After Slovenia became an independent state, Slovene student’s started to feel a need for opening to the world. If we want to walk along with the most developed countries, we certainly can not afford hiding and separating from the rest of the world. In the forcoming period of a so called “global village” our state is much too small for the attitude of that kind. On the other hand the Slovenes as numerically not very strong nation can not let the contacts between the nation and its diaspora to die away. Now that we have our own state and we are able to decide our own future, we are able to define more courageously the frame of a new, all Slovene co-operation. But the company of that kind will not have the future unless we involve in those plans young people, members of future intelligence above all.

The project “Slovene Students around the World” at the International Office of Student Organization of the University of Ljubljana (SOU) was started as the result of such mentality. The Project has been operating for two and a half years and it became a part of the regular activities of the international Office. When the project was brought up its aim was to establish contacts with Slovene students on the other side of the state borders, around Europe and worldwide, if the interest for co-operation existed. We were well aware of the fact that we were starting almost all over again, while after the stormy period at the beginning of the nineties even the modest contacts from before were cut down. Our anticipation that that was the last time to reach out the hand to our colleges abroad, turned out to be correct, while their reply was far over acceptation. We have established contacts with Slovene students’ Clubs in Klagenfurt, Graz, Wienna, Zagreb, Split, Rijeka and Triest. We helped the Slovene Students‘ Club in Zagreb to get on its feet after a couple of years of break and start with its work within the frame of Slovenski dom. On the other hand the Slovene Students’ Club in Triest was a completely new association of  Slovene students at the University of Triest from both sides of the border. All those Clans got very well aquatinted with the Student Organization of the University of Ljubljana during the past year, which was their host at several occasions, among which the first meeting of Slovene Students‘ Clubs from abroad, which took place in Ljubljana in april 1995, was of the highest importance. We strive to make such a meeting a traditional one.


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