May 12, 2025
When we talk about cultural heritage, we usually imagine historical monuments, museums, archives, or folk traditions that preserve echoes of the past. But heritage is not just about what was. It is also about what can be.
Cultural heritage is a resource that helps communities see potential where others see only ruins or “old things.” It can be a source of inspiration, economic development, social cohesion, education, and even innovation.
Why is it important for us?
The NGO Center for Sustainable Initiatives works with heritage not because it is “necessary” but because we understand that small communities have tremendous potential that often remains unrealized.
Old buildings, archival photographs, great-grandmothers' recipes, or dialects are not just about nostalgia.
It's about opportunities. It's about meaning. It's about self-respect. Because if we don't tell our own story, someone else will, and not always in the right way.
This is not about restoration for the sake of restoration. It's about showing:
📍 Old does not mean outdated. It can become a platform for new ideas.
Local does not mean provincial. On the contrary, it is a uniqueness that should be preserved and promoted.
📍 Cultural heritage is not a ballast, but a springboard. It can give a start to a small business, an educational initiative, or a tourism project.
We see how, by opening the closed attics of museums, letting young people into spaces where it was “not allowed” until recently, we are changing the attitude towards heritage. It becomes not “alien and closed” but ours and alive.
We believe that heritage is not about frozenness. It's about dialog.
It is about movement.
About discovering the new in the old.
And about how memory can not only remind, but also inspire action.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)