FEDERAL EXECUTIVE REPORT 2024

2024 was a different year to 2023.

First of all, on behalf of the Australian Lithuanian Community Association, I would like to congratulate Kristina Cox Rupšiene, Loretta Čižauskaite Tigani, Rūta Sankauskas and Henrikas Antanaitis who were awarded medals in 2024 by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania for their contributions to the Lithuanian Community.

The focus of the execuIve this year was:

• To complete the Constitution review;
• To address the issues arising from the resolution of moving the live Federal Councilsessions to alternate years to Australian Lithuanian days (ALD);
• Dainų Šventė in Vilnius, as it now included, in its official program, the event„Sujunkime Lietuvą“ (Let‘s unite Lithuania) which is co-ordinated by our WorldLithuanian Community;
• The referendum regarding retaining Lithuanian citizenship for those born inLithuania; and
• Start preparatory work for the 75 jubilee of ALB.All our meetings were via zoom and we had eight meetings in 2024. Jomantė Maksvytytė, our member for cultural affairs resigned early in the year due to work and health issues. A big thank you to Jomantė for the work she did during her term in the committee. Consequently, the president has undertaken that additional cultural role in the interim.Early in the year after discussions at Federal Executive level the President had a meeting with all our community leaders regarding how to proceed with the transition to having Federal council meetings live in the alternate years to the Australian Lithuanian Days. The options were to extend the term of office of current members of the Federal Council and Federal Executive for one year or to hold new elections for only a one-year term. Federal council members were contacted and asked to indicate whether they would like a zoom meeting or to vote electronically on this. It was unanimous decision to have an electronic vote. The electronic vote was held. Of the 29 Federal Council members 20 voted. The result was 16 for the extension and 4 against. Consequently, as the terms were extended this years AGM is being held as an AGM and reports by all members will take place as usual at the live convention in 2025. A proforma will be sent out early in 2025.The President maintained close working relationship with the Lithuanian embassy in Canberra throughout the year. We have raised the need for Work and Travel visas for young people and the need for an agreement in regards to double taxation and social security. Discussions are currently underway about how best we can celebrate year of Čiurlionis in Australia. We are also being invited to make use of the opportunity when there is a consular mission to make contact with those who attend the mission and try to get them to join our communities. Consequently, we are asking all communities that when there is a consular mission in your jurisdiction that members of the community (not necessarily the committee) are there for the duration to provide information on the community with membership forms to encourage people to join it.

In May this year there was a Senate inquiry into Australian support of Ukraine. A submission was made but we have heard nothing more since. In June we were notified by the International Policy Section of the Department of Social Security that Australia is currently developing an international social security agreement with Lithuania. We responded to their notification and are awaiting on developments in this area. We also wrote to the Attorney General’s Department seeking clarification on whether Australian citizens can undertake compulsory military training in Lithuania and whether the Šauliai organisation could legally exist here. As a result of the recent reply we will need to get further advice on these matters.

The constitution Review subcommittee has worked intensively to prepare the Constitution for consideration by the Federal Council at the AGM. The subcommittee was chaired by the president Rasa Mauragis and its members were Dennis Gaylard, KrisIna Hayes, Jonas Mockunas, Algis Šimkus, Alex Talanskas and RamuIs Zakarevičius. A big thank you to them all for the work they have done over the last two years.

A lot of time and effort went into the preparation for the „Sujunkime Lietuvą“ (Let‘s unite Lithuania) event in Vilnius on 30 June 2024 where we showcased our community and the country that we live in. The team of Rūta Peleckienė, Edita Meškauskaitė, Jurgita Černauskaitė and Rasa Mauragis worked on this leading up to the event and throughout the event assisted by 28 community members from every one of our communities. Rūta Peleckienė especially had a very hard Ime in trying to extract videos from all our communities. A circular video was then prepared thanks to help from Saulius Stepulis and Jurgita Černaukaite. We had given a lot of noIce to everyone regarding this but not all communities provided videos which was very disappointing. So we improvised as best we could. We organised for a t-shirt to be designed with „Australijos lietuvis“ encouraging everyone going to Lithuania to acquire one. It was designed so that could also be used for other occasions such as the upcoming World Lithuanian sports games in 2025 in Palanga. We are very grateful to Mindaugas Simankevičius who donated his time and talents to this project. We had a 9x9m marquee where we had stands from 2018 event and 6 stations. One stand about the communities was updated to reflect our communities as they are today in Australia. We were the only group that had activities for children even though that was on the list of what they had asked all communities to cover. A very big thank you to Rūta Sankauskas who organised this component. In addition to the information stands we had organised to have a quiz but due to our proximity to the stage it was not able to be implemented successfully over the day. We also had an information station, a tasIng station, painting station and a signing station where people were invited to write a greeting to our community for our upcoming jubilee. The president and his wife and several ministers are amongst those who signed the eco printed cloth.

For the first Ime at Dainų Šventė there was also a PLB Forum. Australia was represented by Jurgita Černauskaitė, Eglė Garrick, Linas Kubilius, Rasa Mauragis, Edita Meškauskaitė Rūta Peleckienė, Birutė Radzivanienė, and Rūta Sankauskas. There was a wide range of information presented at the forum with a big focus on opportunities and possibilities for returning to Lithuania.

We are very grateful that Atspindys was prepared to go to Lithuania and to go through the vigorous selection processes to represent Australia at 3 significant events.

The culmination of the event is always the song day. The parade from the Cathedral to Vingio parkas included our choir people, ”Atspindys” and others who were at the event from Australia. A very big thank you to Birute Prašmutaite and Nemira Stapleton OAM for preparing the 25 parIcipants from Australia for this event. An additional thank you to Birutė who prepared some of the participants from outside of Melbourne and Adelaide via zoom.

Mention needs to be made also of the two independent art exhibitions that were held in Lithuania at the time of the festival that helped raise our Australian Lithuanian community profile amongst Lithuanians. They were the exhibitions by Mindaugas Simankevičius in Vilnius and Jazmina Cininas in Kaunas.

Maintenance of the Lithuanian language is difficult. Currently there are 7 language schools in Australia. Not long ago one started in Cairns. Three schools are involved in the exchange program, having Lithuanian language practice teachers to come from Lithuania. Most of the schools are using the Ministry’s integrated program. There are about 140 students across the schools with the age span being from 3 to 80. The teachers meet once a month via zoom. There was an event at the Dainų Šventė where Rūta Sankauskas represented our schools. Currently they are all preparing intensively for the upcoming Australian Lithuanian Days in Adelaide.

The future of our communities is in the hands of our youth. We are very concerned that ALJS has been struggling over many years. In the last several years we have seen good intentions but lack of moving forward. Mid this year the position of president of ALJS moved to Sydney. Akvile Ciplijauskaite has to be highly commended for the work she is putting in to try and resurrect the ALJS not only in Sydney but across Australia. A marketing strategy was put in place to try and raise awareness of the organisation and together with ALJS we asked all communities to put to share the information via their social media and email lists. The organisation needs help from all of us by actively encouraging young people that we know live in our communities between 18 and 35 years of age to join ALJS.

Over the last two years we undertook 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 to Australia as in 2025 we will be celebrating 150 years since Čiurlionio birth. We had a meeting in Lithuania with the Project Leader. It has been a difficult and protracted process and not looking promising at this stage because of the cost. However, we have other ideas for celebrating Čiurlionis during 2025. We will be asking all communities to have a focus on our jubilee together with a focus on Čiurlionis in 2025.

A documentary series on the diaspora is being produced by Audrone Bielinienė. Part 1 “Širdies Pilgrimai” to honour the Lithuanian Charter was completed this year and premiered in Vilnius and will be shown at ALD. She is coming to Australia to film Part 2 and will be attending ALD in Adelaide as well as documenting stories in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. Rasa Mauragis has been liaising with Audrone Bielinienė regarding this visit. Archbishop Virbalas is coming to Australia for ALD and that is being organised by Father Deveikis.

Whilst in Lithuania at LRSPLB commission meetings Rasa Mauragis continued to develop connections with government ministries and government institutions to raise our profiles and our needs. Meetings have been held with:

• Director of Lithuanian National Cultural Centre Saulius Liausa;
• Archbishop Lionginas Virbalas – the delegate for Lithuanian Catholics abroad;
• Lithuanian State Central Archives – Inga Vizgirdienė;
• Director of Global Lithuania Lina Žukauskaitė and her team in the Department of Foreign Affairs;
• Director of Historical section of Lithuanian National Museum dr Giedrė Milerytė;
• Regina Urbonienė and Ilona Mažeikienė from Vytautas Kasiulis Art Museum;
• Audrone Bielinienė – documentary film producer.Communication and information flow is one very important focus of our work and one that we need to keep improving on and finding different ways to address the shortfall in passing on of information. We are trying to communicate as widely as possible and pass on the information as we receive it. As of today, there are at least 42 different Lithuanian group Facebook pages. Some of them are private and we as an organisation cannot access them but we can as indviduals. Jurgita Rakauskaitė has been actively passing on information through as many of these groups as she can as well as to the communities. Especially in the first half of the year there was a very big campaign worldwide to encourage those with Lithuanian citizenship to register to vote. We did as much as we could but were not encouraged by the result. Amer every national event videos are being collected byRūta Peleckienė from all our communities and collated into one and sent for sharing on LRT. Our next step is to explore setting up an Instagram account and to look at other options for information sharing and gathering. All studies indicate that social media is the most effective form. We are very grateful that Adelaide and Sydney communities share the newsletters with the Federal Executive. This helps us to be informed and up to date with information from these communities. We ask that other communities do the same.This year as a result a Federal Council‘s resolution a different approach was put into place for collecting membership dues from member organisations. A two step process is now required. Amer receiving the number of registered community members we now invoice each community. Consequently we are more aware of current numbers in our communities.Of great concern is the decline in the numbers of members in our communities overall. As at 30 June there were only 462 paid up members . On the one hand it is exciting to see new groups forming. Just recently a group started to form in Cairns that is a combination of third generation Lithuanians wanting to connect with their roots and new arrivals. We hear there are a few in Darwin. The president met with the community in Perth and was encouraged by the enthusiasm and interest shown by those of the third wave wanting to be actively involved in community life. We see a growing community in the Gold Coast where a lot of young professionals are setting up home. They have expressed their desire to be part of ALCA. Our biggest membership numbers are in Canberra and Sydney. Some communities are maintaining their numbers in others they have declined. One reason given is that people choose between joining a club or the community association. We really all need to be more proactive in how to encourage people to join not only a club but the community. Memberships need to be encourage not once a year but at every possible opportunity that there is. We would like to have a major focus in the upcoming year on trying to increase membership everywhere but the Federal Executive cannot do this unless all communities are on board with the idea and are prepared to be part of it. We could try to have a markeIng blitz with a two fold focus – one on those second, third and fourth generation lithuanians and another on the third wave. Both groups are very important to our continued growth and existance.

Next year will be a big one. We will be celebrating our our 75 year jubileee with a Federal Council convention at a place to be decided by the Federal Council. Plans for this will be shared later. The World Lithuanian Sports games will be on in Palanga 3-6 July 2025 and we hope that this Ime Australia will be well represented at this event . The XVIII PLB Seimas will be held in Vilnius July 7-11 2025. We have seven delegates of which we need to elect five.

Before ending this report there needs to be a very big thank you to Australijos Lietuvių Fondas for its continued financial support of the Federal Executive.

In closing I apologise for not presenting this report in both languages due to time constraints.

Rasa Mauragienė

President, Federal ExecuIve ALCA
Krašto Valdybos pirmininkė