PEACE AMBASSADORS OF KOSOVA
FACT:
- Each year since 2002, 3000 kids drop primary education due to difficult social and living conditions (up to date approximately 24 000 kids).
Based on MTS statistics, over 1300 children were orphaned in Kosovo with one or both parents killed during the war. The most damaged areas are in Krushe e Vogel (Prizren Municipality), where the entire village has lost their head of the families (males) Recak, Kotline, and Pozhoran also suffered similar massacres. Mother Teresa Society identified the dire situation and immediately started to discuss possible ways to offer support to children in these areas who need assistance directly or indirectly. MTS, having such a large and young volunteer network, was able to create a foundation of support in these areas and work to help kids and teenagers overcome the setting in which they were immersed. Perhaps these same children will become MTS volunteers themselves in the future.
On the 30th of August 2008, with the help and cooperation of the community from the village Krushe e Vogel and Ministry of Youth, Culture, and Sport of Kosova, the village of Krushe e Vogel was named a Peace village . Children and women in this village were identified as the most vulnerable category of people in the area who required assistance. One of the first priorities set was providing these children and by extension the mothers of these children with psychotherapy activities and integration. Immediately MTS began to cooperate with the village schools in (Kotlinë, Recak, Pozhoran and Krushe e Vogël) to provide adequate education and supplies such as stationary and other school necessitates making sure these children didn’t fall behind of the school system.
Mother Teresa Society seeks to work with children victims of the war and transform the anger and trauma these children have experienced into something beneficial to themselves, their families, community and tomorrow to the entire society. Each year MTS organizes a Summer Camp for PA with different topics and themes. This year (2011) in July, a group of P.A. will attend a 7-day camp with lectures on anthropology and ethnography of the village Theth in Albania. The skills obtained from these lectures will allow these young adults to go home and conduct the same ethnographic and anthropologic studies on their own communities, perhaps even inciting tourism to their own villages.
