Loden volunteer and director launch a Friendship Society in Budapest
The Hungarian-Bhutan Friendship Society was inaugurated on 15 September in Budapest with a talk by Loden's director, Dr Karma Phuntsho on Bhutan's transition from a medieval country to a post-modern state. The event was hosted by ELTE University and attended by an audience of over 200 people including university faculty and students, members of Buddhist centres, ecologists, economists and media persons. “There is a growing interest in Bhutan in Hungary,” said Zoltan Valcsicsak, the main person behind the initiative to start the society.
Earlier in 2011, Zoltan spent three months in Bhutan as a volunteer for the Loden Foundation. His experience living and travelling in Bhutan, which he communicated to his friends in Hungary through a blog, inspired him to conceive the idea of a friendship society. “The fresh mountain air and some Bhutanese Ara must have gone into my head to trigger it”, he says jokingly. The society is spearheaded by Zoltan, who is an international corporate responsibility expert, and by two academics in Budapest working on Buddhism and Buddhist economics.
“There is much that the rest of the world can learn from Bhutan in terms of its Buddhist heritage and ecological wisdom”, says Prof. Zsolnai, who is one of the founders of the society and a specialist in Buddhist economy. Meanwhile, Bhutan can gain from the experience of Hungary, which has gone through a quick transition from being an authoritarian socialist state to democracy and economic liberalisation.
With about 10 million people and area more than twice the size of Bhutan, Hungary is the leading power in eastern Europe and one of the most popular tourist destinations in the region with over 8.6 million tourists per year. Hungarian contribution to the world include, among other things, telephone exchange, tungsten bulb, the ball point pen, and Rubik’s cube. Despite being a Christian country, Hungary also has the only Buddhist University in Europe.
The Loden Foundation aims to promote Bhutan and Bhutan's culture in the other parts of the world. Read more in Hungarian media.
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