150 pupils from the municipality of Novaci will holiday free of charge this summer at the "Molika" hotel on Pelister. The initiative is organised through cooperation between the state power company ESM, its "Molika" hotel and the Municipality of Novaci, and is intended for primary-school pupils.

Initiatives like this are one of those rare pieces of news that don't call for scepticism - children from a small municipality get a summer holiday in the mountains that many otherwise couldn't afford. For families in rural Macedonia, where every denar counts, a free stay for a child at "Molika" is real relief, not just a pretty picture.

Still, one remark remains. When a state company and a municipality organise something like this, it's good - but it would be even better if it didn't depend on the goodwill of whoever's in power at the moment, and instead became a regular, systemic programme that belongs to the children every summer, no matter who sits in the municipality. A good deed today is news; a good deed repeated every year is policy. The second is what we should aim for.