Macedonia is among the areas that were incorporated in the Greek state with the so-called "New Lands", but which also received refugees mainly due to the numerous military and political adventures of the Greek nation in the 20th century. An area with long history and tradition, it shaped its image and present-day identity mainly through the combination of the character of the "New Lands" with the arrival of the "new people", the refugees.

The different communities carry through time memories and traditions that belong both to the Macedonian area and the refugees´ homelands. Particularly the older generations, given the fact that their starting point were oral societies and now find themselves in the digital era, maintain a wealth of experiences and communicative ways, which deserve to be preserved as a cultural reserve for the future.

The project "Cultural and Genealogic Digital Collection of Central Macedonia" aims at the creation of a digitally composed cultural reserve with the digitization and documentation of the active social memory and, at the same time, attempts to provide information and guidelines for the methodology and techniques of the programme, to direct the researchers and the public to the sources, to be a source of communication between the programme and the international public and to compose a potential community of people with common roots, local references and research interests.

Geographically the project covers the area of the region of central Macedonia, but with references to the refugees´ homelands in Asia Minor and the Balkans. Regarding the time, first of all it refers to what has been preserved in our memory, in the testimonies and the relics we keep. Of course historically it covers mainly the 20th century, but with references to the distant past of the communities that are presented. Structurally, it develops around three thematic fields: "family memory" [genealogy, population history], "communicative memory" [autobiography - testimony] and "cultural memory" [local history, relics, traces in the public space] and the respective sub-programmes of collection and presentation of the material and the communication with the public.

To achieve this objective we combined conventional ways of collecting and managing information and the respective digital techniques and methods in order to create Internet and multimedia applications. The innovative element of our programme is the large scale written communication with the public, as well as the submission, control and update of the data in family and local scale.

The project has been developed by FHW´s researchers and technical staff, in cooperation with external collaborators, with volunteers, and with the active participation of local communities, refugees, local administration, individuals and other institutions.

The FHW ensures, those who participate in the Project that the submitted information is used solely for the purposes of the project.