I am sending this message in response to the article "Today Purvciems, tomorrow the world" by Ben Nimmo in your March 10-16, 2005 issue.
I read about the achievements of the two girls, Linda and Lelde, who have organized the regional selection for the European Youth Parliament. I highly appreciate their energy and involvement in the hard process of managing such an event.
As a veteran of the European Youth Parliament, I would like to bring your attention to the original organizer and founder of Latvia's EYP 's Dzintra Libane. She has been organizing Latvian youth participation in EYP sessions for more than 10 years. She was the first to help Latvian high school students to "see the world" from a different perspective.
Dzintra Libane has devoted years to this difficult process, which involved not just selecting the students, but also searching for sponsors, organizing the trip, and managing EYP session in Ventspils, Latvia, when participants from all European countries met. And this was voluntarily. She has not received any monetary remuneration. A former English teacher at Riga First State Gymnasium, she was also the recipient of the Golden Pen award for the best teacher of the year. She was a Fulbright scholar in 2003 and president of the European Youth Parliament National Committee of Latvia from 1992 to 2003. I believe Dzintra's story is worth writing about.
