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More people than ever before attended the Hungarian Heritage Festival, the premier annual cultural event for Hungarians in the Washington, D.C. area, on Saturday.
McLean, near Washington, D.C., hosted the third annual all-day cultural event, which featured performances by Hungarian folk music groups from Washington, D.C., as well as performers from New Jersey. The more than 40-year-old Tisza Ensemble and the Szikra Band performed, and members of the 50-year-old Hungarian scout team in Washington also gave a performance. Bence Hajdú, a folk dancer currently working in Washington through the Kőrösi Csoma Sándor Scholarship Program, performed a dance show.
As usual, the Hungarian Embassy and several diaspora organizations, such as the Hungarian Human Rights Foundation, the American Hungarian Coalition, and the HuGo Initiative, a mobile app that collects Hungarian-related sites in the United States, were present at the Hungarian Heritage Festival organized by the Kossuth Foundation.
Péter Szilágyi, Deputy Secretary of State for National Policy at the Prime Minister’s Office, gave a welcome speech at the event. The politician stressed that
events like these provide an opportunity not only for the Hungarian community, but also for members of the majority nation to get to know what Hungarians are like.
He pointed out that such an event also shows how the Hungarian government’s support for the diaspora is used, as resources from Hungary also contribute to its implementation.
Sándor Végh, President of the Kossuth Foundation, the organizer of the event, stressed that every year more and more Americans are interested in Hungarian culture, and that the number of Hungarians living in the U.S. capital area is also increasing, with well over a thousand people attending the event this year. The diaspora leader believed that
a festival like this is the best way to engage the diaspora community, and the growing numbers of participants are proof of that.
He pointed out that the Kossuth Foundation has also taken on the task of bringing Hungarian organizations in the Washington, D.C. area together, given that the foundation is the maintainer of the Kossuth House in downtown Washington, D.C., owned by the Hungarian state. The facility hosts a number of Hungarian programs and is also home to the offices of several Hungarian organizations.
Via MTI, Featured image: Facebook/Kossuth Foundation