Over Half a Million Participants So Far in “Without Borders” Student Program

So far, some 535,000 students have participated in the “Without Borders” program, with more than 900 settlements having joined in, Árpád János Potápi, State Secretary for National Policy, said in Budapest on Tuesday.

At a joint meeting of the Committee on National Cohesion and the Committee on Culture of the National Assembly, the State Secretary stressed that the primary aim of the program is to promote and strengthen the development of links between Hungarian children from Hungary and those from abroad. In addition, the excursions to Hungarian areas outside of Hungary contribute to strengthening local patriotism, they promote the knowledge of Hungarians living abroad, and increase geographical, geological, and ethnographic knowledge.

He also pointed out that nearly two thousand applications had been received in the current academic year, and to ensure that all groups of students could go on excursions, the available budget had been increased to HUF 1.8 billion (EUR 4.5 million).

Transylvania is the largest region in the list of destinations visited, followed by Slovakia, Croatia, and Vojvodina (in Serbia).

The program is currently on hold for Transcarpathia, he noted.

Speaking about the results of the program, the State Secretary cited a survey showing that 78% of Hungarian university students said they had visited Hungarian-inhabited areas abroad. This is largely thanks to this program, he stressed. 62% of students reported having Hungarian friends from abroad with whom they have daily contact, and 65 percent said their trip abroad was an experience of a lifetime.

“We Hungarians belong together, despite the existence of borders, as the country has borders, but the nation does not,” he said. He believes it is important that the feeling of national belonging is not just a slogan, but a real experience. He noted that

the program should be considered to be extended beyond primary schools to secondary schools, if the necessary resources are available.

András Csite, director of the Hétfa Research Institute, stressed that the program’s main aim is to raise children’s level of knowledge in the field of education, but that it also has economic effects, mainly abroad. The groups travel all over the Carpathian Basin, and there is no corner of the world that the participants will not have visited. Among the destination cities, Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár), Oradea (Nagyvárad) and Deva (Déva) are in the top three.

Via MTI, Featured image: Facebook/Határtalanul 2023