Get a Kosovan Kid to School

Saturdays are always the busiest days at the centre in Fushe Kosove which you’ve helped us to pay for. It’s on Saturdays that the extracurricular classes are held, and with the school year just having started, the centre is busy with over 90 children buzzing with excitement.

This Saturday is particularly hectic because we have a special guest: British singer Joss Stone is coming to visit. But just before she arrives, I manage to have a little chat with Samet, a 10 year-old boy who is attending classes. Samet looks at me carefully when I ask him about his dreams for the future, and tells me he wants to be a policeman when he grows up.

‘Samet is always very punctual and never misses a class; he is very attentive,’ says Lirije, who is teaching Albanian at our centre. She’s one of our over 120 volunteers who take turns teaching on Saturdays and whose transport from Prishtina is covered by your kind donation.

Our mediator Hysni tells me that Samet lives with his parents and four siblings, though he is the only one attending the public school right now. A year ago, Samet’s father, only just managing to provide for his family by what he earned from singing at weddings, decided to take his family to Germany, in hope of a better life. He and the children were sent back to Kosovo though it was hard to fit back into their former life especially when Samet’s brothers and sisters had lost their place at the local school . The children are now attending intensive classes initiated by The Ideas Partnership, to catch up with their peers.

But after this confusing time shifting countries, at least one person in the family still has the stability of school, and your donations have equipped Samet with school bags and school supplies for his lessons so he can succeed there.

Besides the classes on Saturdays, Samet loves our Reading Together project. He was one of the first children to try Reading Together through Skype, pairing with a volunteer in the UK with whom he reads each week from our stock of bilingual books.

By the time Joss Stone arrives he is deep in a story.

Thanks to you, Samet’s siblings will get back to school, and Samet will have the chance to contribute to building Kosovo. We believe that he can become a hard-working policeman who really enjoys reading.