TIRANA, May 3 /ATA/ – By I. Vata/ – The Albanian textbooks will travel to distant Australia where, according to statistics, there are around 14 000 Albanians.
This was the highlight of the meetings that Minister of State for Diaspora, Pandeli Majko, held with senior officials of Australian Foreign Ministry and Department for Education and Training in Canberra.
Minister Majko, who is the first senior official of Albanian state to visit with Albanian community in Australia, expressed his gratitude to local authorities over the high standards in treatment of emigrants, saying: Integration and preservation of identity are not in conflict with each other.
Lauding the incorporation of Albanian language into the school system of the cities with a large number of Albanian nationals such as in Melbourne, Majko asked Director for Europe and Asia at Education Department, Craig Johnson, to support the project for distribution of Albanian textbooks in Australia and rollout of online books.
For his part, the Australian senior official highly appreciated the initiative of Albanian govt. in cooperation with Kosovo govt, asserting his readiness to assist with implementation of this project.
In Australia, language is of paramount importance and we have focused our attention on preserving the languages of communities that live here for 25 years now. I fully grasp the importance of the project of orienting the kids to certain materials that are related to heritage and language of origin, Johnson said.
I highly appreciate the plans for publication of online books as a means of reaching out to the young generation.
For his part, minister Majko described the model of integration in Australia as an example to be followed by other countries.
The meeting with Vice Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Christofer Langman, focused on cooperation between both countries to open the embassy of Albania in Australia. /a.g/sm/
