Štefan Huzjan from Grosuplje

Štefan Huzjan is the winner of an award for his selfless activity over many years in the area of promoting and organising various forms of lifelong and adult education. He is a man who rejoices at every new growth, especially when it bears rich fruit among his compatriots, to whom he has devoted the past few years of his work.

Štefan Huzjan, a lecturer in sociology, innovator, promoter and head of a number of ecological, cultural and education projects (in particular a range of study circles, which include: Oil Museum, Ecotourism, Permaculture, Heating with solar power, Exploring cyclist paths) comes from the bilingual town of Dobrovnik. In Pomurje he has headed international ecological research camps; he was also the organiser of the Lifelong Learning Week in Dobrovnik, Kobilje and Lendava, and in Grosuplje, where he currently lives.

People from the economically underdeveloped north-eastern part of our country are particularly grateful to him, since he not only continues to promote their enterprising spirit and self-development (he organised special workshops for the development of entrepreneurial ideas suitable for the local environment), but he also encourages them to open up doors to the world. In order to enable anyone interested to learn how to communicate via state-of-the-art communication technology, and in order for this idea of openness to develop among young people, he took on the task of establishing a network of telehouses (education and information centres which provide access to computers, e-mail and the internet, and which establish and mediate various local media). The telehouse is founded in part by municipalities and in part by the EU via PHARE Credo programme. The first telehouses intended for residents of the municipality of all generations was opened in Kobilje and in Dobrovnik, while Huzjan's entire plan envisages six telehouses in six municipalities, of which two are located in neighbouring Hungary.

His achievements are proof that even less educated and insecure people from the hitherto peripheral regions can take on an important role in development.