Federal Executive report for first half of 2023

Six months have passed since the current members of the Federal Executive of the Australian Lithuanian Community Association (ALCA) took on their roles. We are very happy that Australian Youth Association has continued to be actively involved on executive. The work of the Federal Executive is often not visible. At the beginning of the year a lot of time was taken up in organising the special zoom meeting to resolve the issue of the place for the next Australian Lithuanian Days in 2024. After that work started on various fronts.

One important task was to familiarise ourselves with and complete all the requirements under Australian law associated with the Australian Lithuanian Community Association’s incorporation as all Federal Executive members need to be registered as directors. After the death in 2022 of Antanas Čibiras it has taken some time to resolve all the issues and to document the required processes so that in the future it will be a smoother transition. This was only completed this year and the work was done by our committee member for community affairs Aleksas Talanskas.

At the beginning of our term several sub-committees were organised.

• The Constitution review sub-committee members are Dennis Gaylard, Jonas Mockunas, Alex Talanskas, Ramutis Zakarevicius and chaired by Rasa Mauragis. This sub-committee has met three times and is working through the current constitution to prepare any necessary updates and necessary changes for consideration by the Federal Council.
  The archive sub-committee is made up of Daina Pocius, Jonas Mockunas, Rasa Mauragis, Agnė Šešeikaitė-Nathan and Alex Talanskas as chair. This sub-committee is still to meet. Ideally this sub-committee needs members from each of our communities. It is very disappointing that there are is no interest amongst members in some communities that would be prepared to undertake this important work. The terms of reference for this sub-committe have been developed by the Federal Executive to assist with the workings of the archive and the sub-committee.
• The Council of Education is made up of Rasa Ruseckaitė chair, Zita Sankauskas, Kristina Hayes, Paulius Petraitis, Aušra Brazitieinė, Jūratė Kušeliauskienė, Justė Stonienė. They are planning to meet in person in Adelaide for a seminar in November. This year two of the schools in Australia received financing from the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport. The Perth school Pelėda received 4,000E and Melbourne‘s „ Mano Kalba“ 9,000E. The schools in the other cities did not apply for funding in this round.

The president attended March 11 celebration by the Sydney Lithuanian community and was also interview by SBS on this occasion in Sydney. In June the president attended Jonines in Brisbane and met with members of both the Brisbane an Gold Coast community members. After Joninės she also met with the members of Brisbane committee to discuss the challenges facing them and general community matters.

Whilst in Lithuania in late April-May, in her role as a member of the LRSPLB Commission, the president used the opportunity to meet and discuss pertinent issues for our communities with various government departments and agencies. Our communities in Australia have different issues and challenges from the newly established 3rd wave of migration and those that are in Canada, USA and South America. It is important that we are not all considered as being the „same“ and just as important not to be forgotten. So it is important, that whilst Lithuania is putting a strong focus on diaspora being an integral part of Lithuania, through various program initiatives, that they understand our situation and why we cannot be part of or access many of these. Meetings were held with:

• Director of Lithuanian National Cultural Centre Saulius Liausa and Jurga Gailiute
• Rotary representatives prior to their visit to Australia;
• Archbishop Lionginas Virbalas – newly appointed delegate for Lithuanian Catholics abroad;
• Lithuanian State Central Archyve director Dailius Žižys and his staff;
• Chair of the Arts Council Asta Pakarklyte;
• Director of Global Lithuania Lina Žukauskaite and her team in the Department of Foreign Affairs;
• Rimvydas Rubavicius – President of the World Lithuanian Youth Association;
• Albinas Vilčinskas, Vice-minister , Ministry of Culture of the Lithuanian Republic ;
• Director of Historical section of Lithuanian National Museum dr Giedre Milerytė-Japartienė and Ina Vaisiūnaitė – Ėmužiene;
• Kaune Vytuato Didžiojo Universiteto Director Ilona Kazlauskaite, Assoc Prof dr Vilma Bijeikiene, Doc dr Giedrius Janauskas, and Assoc Prof dr Ingrida Balčionienė.

The president also had the opportunity to meet the new diplomatic appointment to the Embassy Skaiste Anuliene who is replacing Aiste Jakštiene.

There have been a number information and educational sessions being delivered in hybrid form to which Lithuanian community leaders are invited. The president has attended as many of these as is possible. Two very important recent sessions were on “State Mobilization system” and “Understanding of civil resistance and resistance tools” as well as a briefing pre the NATO summit. Further education courses along this line will be held later in the year.

A meeting was held in Vilnius on 3 June of all Education Council chairs from lithuanian communities around the world, the PLB Education commission and the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport. Auistralia‘s representatives attending this event were dr Rasa Ruseckaite chair of our Education Council and Jūratė Kušeliauskienė Oceania representative on the PLB Education Council. The main topic discussed focussed on the implementation of Lithuanian education financing arrangements for diaspora schools, that had been put in place this year, and issues arising in preparation for the financing of the 2024 year. Rector prof. Rimvydas Petrauskas from Vilnius University presented a very interesting talk on 700 years of Vilnius. The fares and accommodation were funded by the Lithuanian Ministry of Education, Science and Sport.

In 2022 a co-operation agreement was signed between our archive, ALCA and Lithuanian Central State Archives. In November two archivist will be coming to Australia to familiarise with our holdings and to put together an exhibition about the migration history of Australian Lithuanians from life in DP camps to establishing themselves her. We would like to encourage all community organisations to pass on their old files to our archive and those with significant family history papers for safe keeping, preservation of our history and digitisation of documents. It is important to note that all archival material is held and will continue to be held in Adelaide. The archive has expanded to three rooms at Caritas’s Adelaide Lithuanian Catholic Centre. We are very thankful to Caritas for providing the facilities.

A “Round Table weekend” for community presidents will be held 20-22 October this year. Partial project funding for this has been received from the Global Lithuania program that is financed by Lithuania’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Preparatory work is underway. One of the main focuses will be the future of Australian Lithuanian Days.

Before us all is the 100 year celebration of the Song Festival in Lithuania. Meetings were held with choir conductors and teachers of the dancing groups to discuss Australia’s participation. The intention is to encourage as many Lithuanians in Australia to go to the event next year. A new initiative is to encourage people regardless where they live in Australia to join the Australian Lithuanian choir. The information has been widely circulated by our committee member for cultural matters Jomante Maksvytyte via Facebook and to communities. Those wanting to participate can learn their part via the internet at times suitable to them and then rehearsals will be organised via zoom. Birute Prasmutas has agreed to run the rehearsals. It is not too late to join in. Work has also commenced on getting ready for World Lithuanian day that will be held on 30 June 2024 a part of the Song Festival festivities. Communities have already been approached to start preparing video material for this. Several stands that were prepared for the 2018 event will be updated.

We are exploring and considering various ideas that would help to enliven the cultural aspect and draw communities together. It is very expensive to bring performing groups to Australia. The other reality is that many would not be prepared to pay the prices charged these days for performances. Currently we are undertaking a feasibility study of the possibility to bring the virtual reality award winning film “Trail of Angels” based on the works of M K Čiurlionis and to have a Lithuanian Film festival in Australia. At this stage we do not know whether it will be feasible or not but we are trying our best.

A commonly raised issue is what to do with Lithuanian books particularly from deceased estates. After a range of inquiries we have been in contact with the Lithuanian Council Public Libraries Association. They have made a recommendation on how to proceed. This information has been provided in an earlier article in Mūsų Pastoge and can be found in both languages on our web site https://www.australianlithuanians.org/uncategorized/lithuanian-books/.

Communication and sharing of information is an important component of our work. Two members on the Federal Executive Ruta Peleckiene and Jurgita Rakauskaite- have been very active in this sphere. Information is shared with community presidents and on 10 March a zoom meeting to discuss mattes and share information. After every national event videos from our communities are being collated into one and sent to PLB and shared via LRT with audiences in Lithuania. People in Lithuania get a glimpse of a moment in time in our communities. The purpose of this is to raise awareness of diaspora community activities in Lithuania. Information received from Lithuania is constantly shared on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/AustralijosLietuviuBendruomene, with Mūsų Pastoge and our website https://www.australianlithuanians.org/. We would like to encourage everyone to follow the Facebook page and our web site as that is the quickest and most up to date way to access the information in a timely way.
In closing a very big thank you to Australian Lithuanian Fund for supporting the Federal Executive and the ALCA financially.

Rasa Mauragis
President
ALCA Federal Executive
29 July 2023