INTERREG ROHU 285 TSH “HEALTHY TRADITIONS- SCIENCE FOR NEXT GENERATION”

               Nowadays mankind is heading towards a technological era that will change our lives. Transformations take place at amazing speed, so it becomes a challenge constantly adapting to the new lifestyle without losing contact with our roots. At the same time, globalization wipes out national borders and brings people together regardless of the country or culture they come from. In order to become a functional multicultural society, there must be a real connection, a true cooperation between the communities that make up this society.

The aim of this project is to create this authentic connection between the communities in the counties of Arad, Timiş (Romania) and Békés (Hungary) through the awareness of the common traditions, but also of the specific ones. To achieve this goal, the three partner organizations in the project – the Iris Research Association, the West University of Timisoara (Romania) and the Romanian Nicolae Balcescu High School in Gyula (Hungary) – will organize a series of impact activities. It is expected that they will lead to a sustainable development of cross-border cooperation among the population in these areas. Thus, approximately 800 people will take part in the activities prepared in the project over a 15-month period.

ROHU-285 project – “Healthy traditions – science for the next generation “- is a project financed by the Interreg VA Romania-Hungary Program and benefits from a total budget of 67671.09 euros, with the following sources: 57522.41 eur- European Regional Development Funds (ERDF), 8132.51 -cofinancing from the National Budgets of Romania and Hungary and 2018.17 Eur own co-financing of the Beneficiaries.

Specifically, a first component of the project consists in activating the volunteers of the three partner organizations in the project (collaborators of Iris Research Aosic, students of the West University and pupils of the Romanian Lyuceum “Nicolae Balcescu”) to collect, through interviews conducted in 15 rural communities , traditional culinary recipes, natural remedies and traditional holiday customs. Some of these interviews will also be carried out at the Gyula Cucumber Festival, to which the project team will participate in August.

Once collected and centralized, this information will be processed by the technical team of the project. Both an ethnological approach (including the timing of the traditions gathered in the project) and a scientific approach to explaining the recipes and remedies collected will be used to analyze the information. They will also be linguistically adapted so that the information can be easily understood and accessible. This process will result in a bilingual culinary guide, but also a bilingual calendar that presents each month a recipe from those collected in the project.
The project also includes the organization of three workshops with the participation of volunteers. In the first “Cook with your ancestors” workshop, volunteers will join with their families and cook together with traditional recipes inherited from their forebears. The purpose of the workshop is to make traditional recipes from the region a reality for volunteers and their families. The second workshop – “Walk with your ancestors” – will have ethnographic themes, focusing on educating the young generation about cultural heritage. The last workshop – “Understand with your ancestors” – will focus on the results of volunteer work, representing the opportunity for volunteers to understand the links between traditional regional therapies and contemporary pharmaceutical science.
At the end of the project will be organized a cultural event that will include artistic moments (traditional Romanian and Hungarian music and dances), culinary (food and traditional beverages) and souvenirs.