A press conference was held in Cluj-Napoca by Tibor Toró, the Director of Research at the Bálványos Institute, Erika Keszeg, researcher at the Bálványos Institute, Réka Kassay, founder of the Zoom Studio animation workshop. Ildikó Erdei, Director of the Béla Bartók Secondary School in Timișoara and staff member of Integratio Foundation, joined in via ZOOM.

The occasion for the press event was that the Bálványos Institute and the Integratio Foundation launched an information campaign to promote and raise awareness of the use of the Hungarian language – paying particular attention to the relationship of teachers and educational institutions with mixed families and their children. At the end of the press conference, the first animated film related to the initiative was shown, offering teachers a solution to a situation in which they have to deal with non-Hungarian parents of ethnically mixed families. The short film was made by the Zoom Studio animation workshop, and will be extended to become a series in the coming years.

At the beginning of the press conference, Tibor Toró said: preliminary research by the Integratio Foundation has shown that the linguistic competences of students from mixed marriages are not always sufficient to enable them to succeed in Hungarian education, but teachers have not been trained to deal with this, therefore the Foundation is now launching an initiative to promote the methods developed to deal with that.

As parents most often come into contact with their children’s school during celebrations and parents’ meetings, the first animated film by the Bálványos Institute, which can be viewed clicking HERE (LINK: https://www.facebook.com/balvanyosinstitute/videos/781792079142507), tries to give practical advice for such a specific life situation. At the same time, many other proposals can be found on the following page: ketnyelvuseg.integratio.ro.