Education Kosovo Project #18988

Get a Kosovan Kid to School

by The Ideas Partnership

Project Report | Sep 12, 2022
From school drop-out to learning centre volunteer

By Charlotte Raphael | Volunteer

Shpresa is a 13-year-old girl who, like too many others in the community where The Ideas Partnership works, dropped out of school. However, Shpresa then changed her mind. In most cases, there would be no going back, but with TIP's support, she has been able to enter an intensive programme which is getting her back to the standard she needs to be a to join her classmates,

Newly motivated, Shpresa is now also a regular volunteer at TIP, helping younger children with their learning at TIP's centre. These children, like Shpresa, have the chance to attend extra classes to boost their skills in English, maths and history, and receive books and schoolbags from TIP when school starts back this month.

Another child who's benefited from this was Niaz, who spoke to me with enthusiasm about how much he enjoys school. 'I get along well with everyone there,' he says as we talk at the centre in front of murals dotted with words like 'adventure', 'hope', and 'think'. Niaz is a regular participant of TIP’s reading club, where children read books in Albanian and English, and attends several other extra-curricular activities at the centre. 'The teachers at TIP have helped me understand concepts I'd struggled with in school, and taught me how to be friendlier as well,' he says. 'My relationship with the TIP teachers is great because they can find the balance between work and play.'

From meeting Shpresa and Niaz I see how TIP is essential in both facilitating access, and inspiring children to stay in school. Among the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities, the rates of children dropping out are appalling and TIP helps to protect the fundamental human right to education for these children. As the mural reminds us, these activities offer adventure and they offer hope,

Permalink

May 13, 2022
A Bridge Between Friends

By Tales Rosa | Volunteer

Street to TIP centre

We did not know what to expect when we set out from our home in Riga, Latvia. In our car we packed our bags and boxes with donations we had collected from friends, family and businesses in the previous weeks. We drove the two-thousand-kilometer journey to discover that Kosovo was a country of friends.

We volunteered with The Ideas Partnership at the Fushe Kosova district and we could not have felt more welcomed, both by the organization and the community.

The warmth with which we were treated was earnest and authentic. Clearly, we had made the right choice coming to work alongside the lovely people of a community in need of support.It was while distributing the donations that we met the Hatixhe and Isa's family.They welcomed us into their tidy home and we asked about their children and their education.Two of their boys, Florim and Muhamer—13- and 7-years-old, respectively—were not going to school.

Florim had had a traumatic experience with a teacher who had wacked him on the head with a book. The school apparently did not take the situation seriously enough and a deflated Florim had stopped going to classes.

Muhamer should have started his school year, but was afraid to attend after hearing what had occurred to his older brother.

This difficult situation seemingly had no good outcome. Without education, how could the boys hope for a better future?

With TIP’s help we devised a strategy to support the boys’ education remotely and to follow their development.

We had frank and respectful conversations with their parents and agreed that education would be the only path towards a better future for the two boys, their family, and their community.

Today, we feel that our brief period in Kosovo has created an invisible but robust bridge between us and the Fushe Kosova community and the people at TIP.

And we hope that much support, joy, and collaboration will run through this bridge for a long time to come.

Permalink

Jan 17, 2022
Together along this way

By Vahide Spanca | Private Donations Assistant

‹ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... 12 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can recieve an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.