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José Ferreira, Director-Publisher |
Toronto, February 8, 2012
Dear Friends,
After ten years online, it is truly gratifying to see that the Adiaspora.com project continues to be very popular among Luso users of the Internet. At this very moment, as I write these lines, the Adiaspora.com website counter displays approximately 19,023,690 hits. This signifies that our more than twelve thousand pages of virtual content continue to be relevant and pertinent among the peoples of the Lusitanian Diaspora. Always striving to serve more and better, the Adiaspora.com team now prepares to face a new and exciting chapter in the history of our website with the inclusion of other parts of the world, namely Europe and Africa, in our content. In so doing, it is expected that the Adiaspora.com project will, in a progressive and sustainable manner, become increasingly more universal.
Throughout the ages, history has demonstrated that, among their many virtues, the Lusitanian people possess an uncanny ability to mobilize their creativity through improvisation in hard times and difficult situations. This phenomenon, unique to our people, is manifest individually or collectively in the way we overcome the many complex existential challenges we face in our everyday lives.
The socio-cultural and economic scenarios, brought about by the current global conjuncture require that the Portuguese Diaspora draw from this common creative source to overcome the challenges with which we are confronted nowadays. To do so, it is essential we harness this collective talent sensibly and judiciously. By conjugating it with sustainable development policies and strategies based on reinvention and innovation, we may then endeavour to consolidate the presence of the Portuguese in the world on all fronts in these less propitious times. And it is precisely on reinvention and innovation that this new phase of the Adiaspora.com project is rooted, with plans afoot to expand in the very near future into the field of publishing with the launching of Adiaspora Publications, as well as organizing events with view to promoting trade and commercial exchange between the Portuguese Communities and the mother-land, Portugal.
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In keeping with a policy of greater inclusivity adopted in recent years, by which the Adiaspora.com project has sought to engage other Portuguese Communities in its many activities, as well as incentivize their proximity to the mother-land, the IX Anniversary celebrations of our website were held in the town of Lajes do Pico, on Pico Island, Azores, on October 23 and 24, 2010. The main theme chosen for the seminar was “Confluences of the Portuguese Spirit, which by its very nature was consentaneous with the aforesaid objectives.
In 2011, the dynamic and multicultural British capital played host to the X Adiaspora.com Anniversary event, a significant milestone in the history of the project as it marked its first decade at the service of Lusitanity.
Held in the iconic enclave south of the River Thames popularly known as "Little Portugal" that is home to a large Portuguese speaking community, the two-day seminar aimed to celebrate the enterprising spirit of the islander from a broad perspective and one reflecting the great diversity found in the island regions of the Portuguese speaking world. As such, the theme of the London seminar was "Insularities, a topic made even more relevant by the very fact that Great Britain is itself an island territory and Portugal's partner in the Treaty of Windsor of 1386, the world's oldest standing alliance.
In 2012, Adiaspora.com will return once more to Portuguese soil to commemorate its XI Anniversary. With the magnificent body of water immortalized by the renowned Azorean author, Vitorino Nemesio, in his novel Stormy Isles (Mau Tempo no Canal) as backdrop, the event will be take place on October 27 and 28, at the Salão da Sociedade Filarmónica União e Progresso, Rua Visconde Leite Perry 13, Madalena, Pico Island, Azores.
The theme of this year's seminar is The Travelling Word: The Azorean matrix in the dispersion of the Portuguese language throughout the world, thereby placing special focus on the concept of azoreanity and its role in the vast Lusophone tapestry as an agent in the dissemination of our mother tongue. Nonetheless, as has been the case in recent editions of the Adiaspora.com anniversary events, a number of guests from other Portuguese speaking regions will be also in attendance with aim to strengthening ties among Lusophone peoples and cultures.
As always, our aim is to encourage the convergence of synergies, dynamics and interests at play in the vastly diverse Portuguese speaking world, in the hope that Portugal and our Communities, along with other countries and regions with whom we share the language of our illustrious poet Camoens, may continue to make their presence felt on the Adiaspora.com website and to participate in the ongoing dialogue taking place daily on its many virtual pages.
Finally, I wish to reassure you that the Adiaspora.com project will remain true to the mission laid out when our website was first founded in 2001, namely, to promote Lusitanity in all its pluridimensionality! The features and articles we publish and the feedback resulting from our initiatives shall be the “compass” by which we guide our informative mission, establishing new directives, changing and adjusting our path whenever necessary or the winds of technological change so dictate. The only thing that is permanent is our will to disseminate and promote Lusitanity and Lusophony to the very best of our ability.
To this end, as always we count on your support and encouragement. |
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