Organizers
LingvaFest’ 2025 is organized by:
Main organizer
Co-organizers
Organizing team:
In case of necessity, you can contact each of the organizers.
Peter Baláž – Main organizer of the event, programme
Peter Baláž, also known as Petro in the Esperanto community, is an Esperanto speaker, publisher and editor; he was elected the Esperantist of the year in 2012. Petro lives in his hometown Partizánske and speaks to different extent the following languages: Slovak, Czech, German, Polish, Russian, English and Esperanto. Petro is very actively involved in the international Esperanto movement and various educational projects, in 2005 he became the coordinator of E@I. He’s famous for being an organizer of international events (mainly but not only Esperanto-related events) as well. He is a former board member of Wikimedia Slovakia and a member of its revision committee since 2012. He owns the Slovak publisher Espero founded in 2005, which mostly publishes Esperanto works. You can see further information on Wikipedia.
Contact: peter.balaz@lingvafest.sk
Dorota Rodzianko – Invoices, finances, orders
Dorota is from Poland and currently lives in Slovakia. Economist according to her diploma, Esperantist according to her heart. Master of tables and papers. Can’t sleep well if she is not organizing something. Since 2010, she has been organizing international events in various European cities and countries. She has experience in organizing events with up to 1300 participants.
Contact: dorota.rodzianko@lingvafest.sk
Sonja Zaretskaia – Social media
Matthieu Desplantes – Web support, technical assistance
Matthieu is from France but spent 7 years in Slovakia and now lives in Austria. He speaks (to various degrees) French, Esperanto, English, Polish, German, Slovak and Russian. He has been involved in the organization of several international events, most of which are related to Esperanto. He also makes videos about languages (in French).
Contact: matthieu.desplantes@lingvafest.sk
Who we are and why we’re doing it
Our organization, Edukado@Interreto (E@I), has long had an idea of organizing a language festival in Slovakia. We’ve been working on the topic of education by means of internet since the beginning (2005), concerning language learning mostly. We create various free multilingual websites. Our activities began by creating the first ever multilingual website for learning the international language Esperanto: lernu.net. Esperanto bears a great significance for us (it’s even the working language in our international office), but we’re busy with other languages, too. We’ve been gradually adding further new projects and languages: slovake.eu, deutsch.info, lingvo.info, russky.info, polski.info etc. Here you cane find an overview of our projects. Besides creating educational websites, we organize various events as well: trainings, seminars, workshops, conventions, summer schools. We’ve been focusing on languages since the organization came to life, and we’ve already noticed the absence of this kind of event in Slovakia. Thus we thought to change this, and now we’re extremely happy to have found like-minded people with whom now we can prepare the event for you!
The vision of E@I is a world of peace and harmony. In which all its citizens are able to quickly and easily communicate with one another all over the globe. The main aims in this direction are:
- to encourage intercultural education, collaboration and communication;
- to support learning and using of internet technologies and languages;
- to help realize the Charter of the United Nations and The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
In order to achieve these aims E@I initiates and supports projects involving international youth cooperation, organizes educational and cultural activities related to the very aims of the organization and promotes the importance and necessity of international communication with no restrictions.
Volunteers
LingvaFest is an event full of a rich, language-focused programme: informative lectures, interesting workshops, fun crash courses, colourful concerts and an excellent accompanying programme. All this is made possible not only thanks to the organisers, but also thanks to the excellent volunteers who help us with the event. To all of them we owe our thanks!
The volunteers are ordinary people, but they have decided to give a little extra of their time (and skills) to this event. They are very important, even though they may be doing work that the average visitor may not even notice – all the more necessary as there is a lot of this (and other) work around an event like this. What does volunteering at LingvaFest entail? There are more than enough tasks, everyone can choose their own (and if you’re not sure, we’ll happily find something for you): working at the info booth, checking and managing technical equipment, providing refreshments for speakers, setting up the presentation rooms, carrying things, preparing materials for visitors, and more.
You can help by volunteering even before the event by contacting exhibitors, getting sponsors, approaching speakers, writing articles, and press releases, etc.
Would you also like to experience LingvaFest from a different (more adventurous) angle than just a regular visitor – as a volunteer? Then fill in this form and become an active part of the festival!