This weeks 17th of November edition of The Maltese Herald Gozo section is now available for download by clicking here.

Previous editions are also available by clicking on this link.

The stories covered in this weeks issue are:

1. The Qala International Folk Festival, fourth edition, organised by the Qala Local Council together with the Qala Menhir Folk Group came to a successful end.

In this years edition, which lasted four days, two folk groups were invited from Slovakia and Greece. The Menhir Folk Group and other local groups also participated in the festival. A conference on local folklore took place during the festival weekend as well as an exhibition on crafts produced in Qala and on Sunday a re-enactment took place of a traditional Maltese wedding.

During the closing ceremony, the Mayor of Qala, Paul Buttigieg, said that the objectives of the festival, were for young people to to discover how their grandparents had lived, as well as to understand the history of the food and costumes of an earlier period. The Mayor also thanked the 150 people who had volunteered to assist with the festival. Mayor Buttigieg thanked the Minister for Gozo, Giovanna Debono, for the support and assistance offered, the Parliamentary Secretary Chris Said for financial assistance for Local Councils to hold cultural activities, as well as Parliamentary Secretary Mario de Marco for his particiation in the local folklore conference. At the end of the ceremony, Parliamentary Secretary Chris Said and Mayor Paul Buttigieg distributed souvenirs and certificates to all the participants and sponsors that contributed to the success of the festival.

2. The residents of Sannat were invited to join forces with the Local Council in a full-day clean-up campaign intended to promote cleaner and tidier surroundings in the locality. The message that the Local Council wanted to convey through this initiative centred on the need to create stronger environmental responsibilities among the residents. Unfortunately clean-up campaigns do not generate direct value-added but are attempts to partially reverse environmental damage generated in the main by residents. A lot of waste from different zones of Sannat was collected and separated for further processing. The waste was then transferred to the Civic Amenity Site located in Xewkija. The Sannat Local Council is already working on future initiatives earmarked to upgrade the locality environment.

Photo by Charles Spiteri features the re-enactment of a traditional Maltese wedding in Qala village.