Deliverable 4.1 Kashubian
The Kashubian case: Naja Szkòła and Radio Kaszëbë
Kashubians also participate in the Fosterlang project. This community, numbering nearly 300,000, is not officially recognized as an ethnic minority in Poland. Only the Kashubian language, spoken daily by approximately 120,000 people, is protected. This Slavic language, belonging to the West Slavic language family, has official status as a regional language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.[1]
The Kashubians have a long tradition of fighting for their culture and language, dating back to the time of Florian Ceynowa (1817-1881), who in the mid-19th century was the first to create literature in the Kashubian language, write down a Kashubian grammar, and create a Kashubian orthography. He is considered by today’s heirs to the Kashubian ideal to be the father of the national cause.
Anna Kościukiewicz-Jabłońska, Hanna Ellwart, and Artur Jabłoński, who have agreed to represent the Kashubians in the Fosterlang project, are associated with the Bilingual Kashubian-Polish Primary School Naja Szkòła (Our School), which has been operating since 2017 in Wejherowo, in northern Kashubia. Anna and Artur founded this school, inspired by Basque schools in Navarra — specifically, Baztan Ikastola in Elizondo, which they first visited in 2014 thanks to Basque activist Maialen Sobrino Lopez.
Naja Szkòła is “that Kashubian school,” as we are known in the city where we operate. Our mission is to embrace children and young people from diverse backgrounds, often multilingual and identifying with more than just one culture—the language, history, and cultural heritage of the Kashubians.
Through this approach, we want to give our students the key to the Kashubian home while simultaneously opening them to the modern world. Therefore, we focus on developing the competencies essential for the 21st century: linguistic, digital, media, and social.
By utilizing the natural cultural space of the Kashubian language, we foster sensitivity and openness to other languages and cultural areas. We emphasize practical skills—linguistic, digital, and media—as well as social ones, as these will determine our children’s future in a globalized world.
Knowing only one language, we see the world in only one way. By learning other languages, we make our world larger and more open. Multicultural awareness is of paramount importance in a globalized world changing so rapidly thanks to new technologies.
We inspire students to be creative, open to alternative ways of thinking, and engage in innovative activities. We teach them how to work with tools that support critical thinking, responsibility, effectiveness, and teamwork.
We help people navigate the deluge of information. We explain how today’s media functions and how they impact our lives. We raise awareness of what an advertising message is. We teach them how to construct information, how to use a microphone, and what a radio broadcast is.
Naja Szkòła’s profile stems largely from the needs of the modern world, but also from the experiences of its founders. Anna Kościukiewicz-Jabłońska and Artur Jabłoński are members of the board of the Perspektiva Kaszëbskô association, which has held the license for the Kashubian radio station Radio Kaszëbë for over 20 years.
The mission of Radio Kaszëbë is building local ties among the inhabitants of Pomerania through the national-cultural-ethnic integration of the community living there ethnic Kashubians, which include the following counties: Bytów, Chojnice, Gdańsk, Kartuzy, Kościerzyna, Lębork, Puck, Wejherowo, as well as Gdańsk, Gdynia, Sopot and Słupsk.24-hourprogram broadcast by7 days a week, listeners can listen to information, entertainment and music programs.Radiokaszebe.plis an internet portal where users will find information from Kashubia, the country and the world. The editorial team prepares news on local government, health, lifestyle and social topics, including those related to preservation and development of the Kashubian language and ethnic awareness.
The radio station’s financial model is based on dynamic audience growth, which translates into the ability to generate advertising revenue, database of local and regional advertisers, and the most important thing remains good relations with entities with which cooperation has been established since the establishment of Radio Kaszëbë. An important addition to this database is cooperation within Independent Package, a commercial agreement between independent local radio stations and Eurozet.
Prepared by: Artur Jabłoński
1]Official data from the 2021 National Census differ slightly. In the census, 177,000 people declared themselves Kashubians, while 87 000 declared that they use the Kashubian language.
