Acceptance Remarks by Hungarian Baptist Aid Director Béla Szilágyi

January 26, 2012

Dear Excellency Ambassador Kounalakis,

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

First of all please allow me to express the gratitude of Hungarian Baptist Aid to Your Excellency. It is a great privilege to receive the “Ambassador’s Award for Active Citizenship”. We will treasure it as a special honour.

When Hungarian Baptist Aid started its charity and relief activities 16 years ago, we believed that the impossible can be made possible. We believed that we can help needy families in Hungary, we can help victims of wars in the Balkans, we can help dying children in North Korea, we can save the lives of those endangered by disasters. It seemed to be impossible to achieve this from a small, poor, post-Communist country with no tradition of relief work. But we believed that just as Jesus fed the crowd of 5,000 from five loaves and two fish, we can also overcome the impossible. We wanted to be the disciples who find and encourage the young boy who offered the five loaves of bread and two fish to feed thousands.

We had the privilege to work together with great organisations from Hungary and many other countries. Men and women who had the will to speak up and act upon their visions. We had different ideas, work style or organisational beliefs, but we decided to join our forces for a common good and together we fought human trafficking, domestic violence and drug abuse, we delivered food, clothes and household supplies to over a million people in Hungary, we rebuilt lives, homes, hospitals and schools in over 25 countries. 

Hungarian Baptist Aid has been an active professional partner of the Hungarian Government in policy making for international relief and development, furthermore in preventing the stigmatization of homeless people and setting up a new care structure that locally reintegrates them in society and prevents them becoming homeless upholding their dignity.

Hungary is a welcoming nation with a good heart. Hungarian Baptist Aid is grateful to the tens of thousands of Hungarians who became active citizens as donors of the Shoebox Charity Drives and their number grew from 3,000 to 25,000 in eight years time. We are grateful to another 12,000 who became donors of our child sponsorship programmes to change the lives of thousands of orphans, abandoned or needy children in 15 countries. We are grateful to thousands of Hungarians who became active citizens as volunteers in our homeless shelters, elderly homes, drug rehabilitation programmes or centers for youth with disabilities. We are grateful to those who embraced the vision to provide equal opportunities to and restore the dignity of those who are marginalised, disadvantaged, looked down upon or live with disabilities.

I am happy that today we have our goodwill ambassadors with us: Ms Fanni Weisz and Mr Vujity Tvrtko. Mr Tvrtko is a Purlitzer Memorial Award winner journalist, and Ms Weisz is hearing impaired who is a great example for me because she overcame grave difficulties to became the active citizen of equal opportunity. Please allow me to ask her to say a few words in sign language.

2010. January has became a fatal month for Haiti. One of the poorest country in the world was in its ruins, over two hundred thousand people died, 90 percent of schools in the affected region collapsed. We flew with over 20 volunteer doctors and nurses from Hungary and the US to save lives. Our medical team treated over 1,500 patients in two weeks. I remember many of them but Bioutelle stands out for me. She is a lovely 11 year old girl. I met her just after a few days of the earthquake. She was playing on the second floor when the quake hit. Her family’s house collapsed and buried everybody. Her brother saved her and their mother from under the ruins, but their father lost his life. Bioutelle had great pain in her eyes as she was talking about what happened, but she started to shine when she talked about her love for music. She used to play the violin, so I asked her to play it for me. She answered: “My violin broke to pieces, just like my dreams for the future.” I will carry her words and her look in my memory for a long time. She gave me motivation to work in Haiti and she gave me motivation for my ministry with Hungarian Baptist Aid. I made a commitment to strive to build new dreams, to turn ruins into a brighter future, to continue overcoming the impossible.

Active citizenship is not about money, status or skills. It is about the heart and will. Hearts that have the vision, hearts that see the need, and hearts that connect with those in need. Willing to find the solutions, willing to find allies with faith to overcome the impossible.

It is still our credo that each of us has to offer what we have however small it may be, and if we all come together then we can achieve great goals. We continue to serve with faith and expertise. The credo of Hungarian Baptist Aid will always be: “the impossible will become possible if we believe”.