August - Heritage Empowerment Month
As per the book “Communities and Cultural Heritage” written by Kaja Hannedatter Sontum,
“Cultural heritage is a major force in shaping societies and has the potential to play a key role in enabling local communities, often marginalised, to become engaged in heritage-based, socio-economic development projects. Elucidation of how living heritage, influencing how individuals in contemporary societies see themselves and their world, is socially constructed by previous generations under certain national and international circumstances, and for the benefit of certain segments of society. Empowerment has to entail a deeper understanding of how traditions are made and unmade with an explicit recognition of how local, national and international communities interact and how, as such, and for specific goals, traditions can be appropriated, manipulated, transfigured, valorised or maligned.”
For us at VERCIDA heritage, regarded as selected symbols of cultural history and achievement can cater for the spiritual needs of the people and act as a means of cultural identification. Heritage resources are protected via management so they can be passed down from one generation to the next and strengthen our sense of who we are and where we came from. Cultural heritage resources are the elements of culture that the current society views and values as inherited from the past. At VERCIDA, we want individuals to be proud of who they are, reflect on who their ancestors were, and appreciate their cultural legacy when passed down through generations.
