Let's make our town prettier - a Study Circle from Knežak

Anyone who has visited Knežak during the past few years will have no difficulty understanding why this award was given to the members of the local Let's make our town prettier study circle, headed by Marjana Urbančič. It would be hard to miss their achievements as you are welcomed by flowers as soon as you enter the village.

The activities organised in Knežak have proven that studying is not limited to a narrow circle of ‘chosen ones', but that it spreads from a founding core into its surroundings, gradual-ly winning them over. In this way it transcends the meaning it has for the individual and becomes a social phenomenon or movement. The villagers of Knežak have written their own success story - the success of their village. It was completely restored, and not only that: they managed to change the mentality and values of villagers both young and old.

"In the beginning they laughed at us," recall the members of the group. Soon, however, every one was glad to participate in a wide range of activities. The members first got to work in 1995, cleaning up Sela, a famous tectonic fenster (window), a geological feature which is an oasis and a protected area for endangered vegetation and animal species that the villagers had turned into a dumping area. The idea that drinking water was running under a layer of deposited waste became intolerable. Next year Lokev was on the programme, a typical karst basin with a sinkhole surrounded by a wall, which is interesting in ethnographic terms.

This could have been the end of the group's activities, had its members not taken to a more demanding study programme. They founded an ecology group and with the help of the Fire Fighter's Society they cleared up the wild Petekini dumpsite. They also tidied the graveyard area, the tombstone of their famous fellow-villager Miroslav Vilhar, and the area around the school setting up a collection point for old furniture and other such household waste material. Their enthusiasm for the appearance of the village was infectious and caught on at school, in other societies, the local Community Centre, the Agricultural Co-operative and in the local and neighbouring municipalities. In order for the work to be continued in the future, the Piškotek society was founded (Piškotek - an acronym in the Slovenian language for Friends of Information, Sports, Culture, Environment, Tourism and Ecology from Knežak).