The Friends of Hungary Foundation awards the Friend of Hungary Award for the fifth time in 2022. Established in 2016, the prize was awarded for the first time in May 2017 to Béla Lipták, leader of the Hungarian American Lobby, journalist Reinhard Olt and the Hungarian American Federation. The 2018 awardees are Marika Radda, President of Club Pannonia, Annamária Heddadné Nagy, Presbyter of the Hungarian Reformed Congregation in Paris, Andrea Lauer Rice and Réka Pigniczky for the visual archive of the Memory Project, and the 2019 recipients are Zsolt Bede-Fazekas, Editor-in-Chief of Independent Hungarian Radio Toronto, Christopher Ball, Honorary Consul of Hungary in Connecticut, and the Hungarian Scout Association Abroad. The award ceremony, which was cancelled in 2020, was made up for at the Foundation's 2021 conference. The winners of 2020 were Miklós Czaun, President of the West Coast Hungarian Scholars Club in the USA, Annamária Friedrich Ireghy, President of the Association of Hamburg Hungarians and journalist Andreas Unterberger. The 2021 awardees are: Anikó Gaál-Schott, who has been working for decades as a "bridge between Hungary and the Washington region" in the United States and other international forums to promote Hungary and Hungarian interests; Zsuzsánna Haynalné Kesserű, a journalist who helps Argentine Hungarians preserve their Hungarian identity; and the Vienna Europe Club, founded by young people who emigrated from Hungary during the 1956 revolution.

The Foundation's Board of Trustees is pleased to announce the winners of the 2022 Friend of Hungary Award. Congratulations to the winners, whose names and descriptions can be read below!

JÁNOS MISKA

The main goal of János Miska’s life’s work has been to remain a Hungarian in faraway Canada, present the Hungarian values to Canadians and keep together the Canadian-Hungarian scientific scene. After returning to Hungary, he dedicated his own house to a research center summarizing his life’s work serving the public. In 2015, he founded the János Miska Canadian Hungarian Literary Archive, which includes books of Canadian Hungarian writers, his own extended correspondence and diary of 40 years. The János Miska Foundation is supporting underprivileged talented students. Once he finished organizing his archive, it will be open for the public.

Dr. SUZANNE PAPP AYKLER

Dr. Suzanne Papp Aykler has been President of the Rákóczi Foundation of Canada since 2001. The organization primarily supports the education of Hungarian youth from across the border and in North America through scholarships.  In addition, the Foundation has organized the Students Without Boundaries every year since 1994. Each year, more than 100 talented young people from all over the Carpathian Basin and North America participate in this program. In total, there are now 3550 participants who have completed the program. The aim of the program is to deepen participants’ knowledge of history, literature and ethnography, to make friends from all regions of the Carpathian Basin, to meet young people from the diaspora and to share cultural treasures from home and the experience of being a minority.

Since 2015, Dr. Papp Aykler has been editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Canadian American Hungarian”. It is the only Hungarian-language press serving the North American diaspora. The newspaper has over 2000 subscribers and thousands of followers on its Facebook page.

HUNGARIAN AMERICAN COALITION

The Hungarian American Coalition, the largest umbrella organization of the American Hungarian community, celebrated its 30th anniversary in August 2021. Through its individual and organizational members, the Coalition represents 38 thousand people, its leaders come from all areas of the United States, and it operates information offices in both Washington DC and Budapest. The Hungarian American Coalition’s mission is to mobilize and coordinate the talents and resources of its individual and organizational members. The Coalition’s work in the last 30 years in building Hungarian-American relationships and improving the reputation of Hungary and Hungarians in the world is inevitable.