ProVillage

Dear scrisoarefaralitere!

Yes, of course we would be very glad if you can do the translations. You can choose any texts you want. What I was wondering about, was it that you wanted us to publish the material in Romanian also on our site? Or would you like to write on your blog and/or in Romanian discussion forums?
Any of these possibilities is OK with us.
What we ask is, that you would also send us the texts, including the addresses to the links, on which sites you publish our pics and/or texts.
As far as we know, all the pictures we have used are “copylefted”, which means that you can use and publish them in non-commercial-what-ever, but you have to tell who is the original creator of the picture or drawing – meaning the person and the source.

If you wish, we can also proofread your material before you publish them, in order to avoid any kinds unnecessary inconveniences.

In fact, we would be very interested in participating in different national discussion forums. Especially in Romania, as the country is a part of the EU, whose building-standards etc. we try to follow, but also because it is a not the “main-stream-language”. By this I mean that it is just like Finnish, Swedish or any one of these languages. This is linked with the fact that I am very fond of all kinds of traditional folk songs.
Just as a side topic; if the composer is not known, they are always very beautiful (and often sad) songs. You might know that we Finns have a deep relationship with the melancholic, we love it. The sadder – the better. 😉
Anyway, my friend Tero Syvänen, that has drawn all the pictures in 3D, and has also made a language training program:
http://lingvox.com/

Once on the site, click on a picture and you can hear a voice, (my voice), pronouncing the text that is underneath the picture. That can also be made into any language, e.g. Romanian. The best thing about making this program, you can even have children working as a team => drawing pics, photographing objects they think are important to understand. (You’ll see what I mean when you go to that page).
If you have Skype (and a headset with a microphone), we can discuss this further. The only thing about Lingvox is, that we do not have very much time at the moment. But the idea is ready, which is a big step.

OK. About the children´s amusement-park/fairy tale-forest:
– There will be all kind of houses from different fairy-tales; Red Riding Hood’s grandmother’s house, The Gingerbread House, The Troll’s House and maybe also The Palace of the Troll King (which architecture I can clearly see any time I listen to Grieg).
Then there will be the “The Small People´s what-ever, living Up in the Trees” [creativity and imagination – I will write the fairy tale later], and “The Pirate Ship“.

– It will be totally free of charge. We will not sell candy or pop-corn or any of that stuff in our village.
There are too many parks where everything costs and the adults ‘go broke on the first day of the vacation’, and the children are just yelling and nagging about “I-want-this-and-that”. And here too, we want to make a difference.

We will be selling food for those who want to eat, and all kinds of useful and beautiful items which the craft-persons have created. This way, the adults – and why not also children together with adults – can learn some new crafts also. (The courses will cost something, as also the crafts-persons/teachers need to eat every day).
It is essential that the child/children can be creative together with their parents, even if this happens only once a year, if/when the family lives in a block-house. The children will surely and always remember those days, hours and moments.

The main thing is that everyone can have fun and find interesting things to do, even without money. There is always work to do, things to build, fences to mend, stories to write and translate for the benefit of other people willing to participate.
Needless to say, I come from a very poor family, where my mother tried to get the ends meet. I still remember how we, the have-not-children, had to look from the other side of the fence at how fun the other children had.
Shortly told, I have been there and seen that.

(The “fences to be mend”, which I mentioned earlier, are not for keeping the children outside, but inside – so that they do not get lost into the woods.)

All in all, we hope to establish some kind of a working cooperation with you, so that we can help each other in the best possible way.

Best regards,

Henry Björklid