School visit - Indian ambassador

On 12 June, Gimnazija Vič was honoured to have H.E. Amit Narang, the Indian ambassador to Slovenia as a special guest to our school.

The occasion was planned to mark a generous donation that the ambassador arranged for our school library. Thanks to his kindness, we received dozens of books from a range of different genres, which will be added to our shelves for our students to enjoy.

The ambassador arrived at our school alongside Ms Irena Pirman, the cultural clerk for the Embassy of India in Slovenia, and they were welcomed by a delegation led by our principal, Ms Alenka Krapež, along with representatives of both the teacher and student communities.

The first part of their visit involved a presentation from our school's promotions group with their mentors from our English department, Ms Blanka Klobučar and Mr Tim Gallagher. Our guests were told about the general school system, a typical day at Gimnazija Vič, and the many different extracurricular activities available for our students. This involved students speaking from a personal viewpoint about their own experiences within different projects such as musical groups, book clubs, art clubs, etc.

The students then had the chance to hear a short speech by the ambassador in which he spoke about the importance of creativity and connection in today's world. Speaking about how both AI and globalisation will continue to have a great impact on society, he stressed the value in young people working together to develop a true sense of their own humanity and to remember the importance of expression through art and creativity. Referring to the books being given to our library, he spoke passionately about the significant role that reading has played in his own life as well as encouraging the students to take time to pick up a book and immerse themselves in the story within. Connecting it to his previous points, he pointed out how reading something interesting can motivate you to search for more information online, leading to you building up a wealth of knowledge on a range of themes and issues.

The visit ended with a chance for our guests to see our school library where the donation of books will find its home. Greeted by our librarian, Ms Monika Zonta, they were able to find out more about the role of the library within the broader school system and discuss the importance of providing accessible reading materials to young people these days.

As a way of marking the occasion, we gave the ambassador a selection of items designed to reflect the creativity within our student community. With booklets of short stories and haiku, as well as a piece of hand-printed art, we hope that these act to remind him of his positive experience meeting students at our school.

We would like to thank the ambassador for the very generous donation and for taking the time out of his busy schedule to meet with us for this event. The day finished with us all in good spirits and with ideas for future cooperation so we very much hope that there will be opportunities for our institutions to work together again in the years ahead.

We would like to add our thanks to Marko Medvešek, one of our 3rd year students, who took over responsibility when it came to photography on the day.