Media Centre FINUGOR marks its 10th anniversary since the day it started working by development and promotion of innovation projects, aimed at support of the Finno-Ugric languages functioning in the sphere of modern information technologies.
Looking back, the media centre was created by resolution of the III World Finno-Ugric Peoples Congress, which took place in Helsinki in 2000. Participants of the main forum of Finno-Ugric peoples made a decision to create such an information resource, which could unite Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic peoples, and enable them to share news of the Finno-Ugric world’s life. The starting point of the media centre’s work is April 25-27, 2001.
“During the last 10 years the media centre has worked a long way and contributed a good deal into unification of Finno-Ugric peoples. From the very beginning the media centre became the leading web-resource of the Finno-Ugric mass media, and, in fact, even formed it, - remarked the chief editor of FINUGOR Yuri Popov. – Later, in different regions of Russia other projects, devoted to the Finno-Ugric subject, were started. We highly appreciate this fact, because it means that Finno-Ugric peoples strive for having their own mass media and want to share information with each other”.
At present media centre’s web-site maintains the leading position among the other Finno-Ugric media resources. The site functions in two languages- Russian and English, which serve as a tool of international communication for peoples of the Uralic linguistic family.
“Our success was not only the result of presenting exclusive news and analytical material, but also participation in development and promotion of the information products such as On-line Finno-Ugric conversation book, and multilingualism as a matter of high priority. During the previous years the media centre had published news in 10 Finno-Ugric languages, now we are planning to create the site version in the Uralic languages. A most essential question of financing is currently being solved. The first step would be starting of the Komi version of the media centre, after that we are planning to make the site “speak” the other most widespread Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic languages,” - added Y. Popov.