Špela Pahor of Piran

Proposers: Marina Hrs and Darja Kromar

The award recipient, Špela Pahor, is a fine example of how knowledge can be shared unselfishly with others, how others can be helped to recognise their own qualities and how they can be continuously encouraged in this. She directs her activities towards children and also adults of all ages, and this also includes people with special needs, to whom she devotes particular attention.

As a lover of books and writing, she devotes much of her time to this. At the library she collects and arranges material on local history, she produces fascinating articles on every event for the local newspaper and other mass media, she publishes books, familiarises people with the past through story telling, to which she invites others from the local community, and she also organises exhibitions of cultural heritage items. She organises travel writing lectures (the series Through other cultures we get to know ourselves) and thereby acquaints people with other cultures. For the youngest listeners, she tell fairy tales, which she also collects and translates. Yet her important role in enriching other people's knowledge does not end here. Indeed to date she has led a range of successful and locally very appreciated study circles, she has arranged exhibitions providing opportunities to collectors, creators and artists to present their work through collections or individual works, and she makes up lists of recommended literature for reading, which indicates that her knowledge in these areas is very broad. She was also awarded a prize for the successful Unicef project Getting to know children of the world.

Through her work Špela Pahor makes an important contribution to the recognition of her home institution - Izola Municipal Library - and to increasing the number of visitors it has. She has an invaluable openness to people of all generations, and this is especially evident in the programmes she herself prepares for them (for instance education about books for preschool and primary school children and travel writing lectures in the pensioners home). Ultimately she also contributes to social cohesion between the majority and minority (Italian) communities on the coast.