It’s better to give than to receive

Guest blog by Foreign Policy, Justice and Home Affairs and Human Rights Attaché Levente Nyitrai

As a young kid I used to not understand that saying. Every Christmas I was eagerly waiting for the chance to attack the nicely wrapped presents under the tree. The moments on Christmas Eve when we entered the until then closed room and started singing Christmas carols before opening them seemed ages.

Today, the 10th December, is International Human Rights Day, which the world has celebrated since 1948 (when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted). And the British Embassy in Budapest is certain to commemorate this special day every year. In the recent past we co-organised well-attended gatherings, conferences or parties with known Hungarian human rights NGOs.

Sparked by the upcoming holidays this year we had a different idea. Building on the successes of our 2011 Christmas charity drive we decided to combine Christmas charity with International Human Rights Day. The idea was to collect donations from Embassy staff and hand them over to Hungarian Roma organisations, which then would distribute them to disadvantaged families in the countryside.

I sent an e-mail around about it and placed four large boxes outside of my office in which we began to collect books, toys for the children, clothes as well as non-perishable food items. Thanks to my goodhearted colleagues, they were full within a few days and I needed to get four more to have room for the continuously coming presents. At the end I physically had a hard time entering my office as not only the boxes were all filled but also the corridor with bags of clothes, stuffed animals and food. Meanwhile our IT colleagues gathered 120 telephones which we have recently replaced and boxed them up as well. As a result they now will find new homes in needy families.

This afternoon Chargé d’Affaires Theresa Bubbear handed the phones over to Roma activist Ágnes Daróczi from Phralipe and the items the Embassy had collected to the representatives of Veletek Vagyunk Alapítvány (We Are With You Foundation). The latter is based in Versend, southern Hungary, whose mayor also came to the Embassy to take part in the event. It was wonderful to see their gratitude when they saw the full boxes. They kept talking about how the donations will lighten up the community’s Christmas and just how thankful they were for them.

These hard-working activists and volunteers definitely know that it’s better to give than to receive – and today all the Embassy staff agree with them.