YOUth can change the future for Kosovo

Like many other organisations around the world, 2020 has been an incredibly frustrating year! Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the government-imposed restrictions that were in place, all PLAY’s face-to-face youth activities were postponed from mid-February until mid-September 2020.

We are delighted to report though that guidelines and restrictions have begun to ease as the number of cases in Kosovo dropped, and PLAY was able to safely get back out into the community to conduct a first youth training for 2020!

The training was with an exciting new partner organization set up during the lockdown - the Lipjan / Lipljan chapter of the Kosovo Youth Assembly (KYA).  The training took place on 19 September and addressed topics that the KYA had identified as important to them during a pre-training needs assessment. The focus areas were human rights and gender equality, and aimed to equip the participants with new skills to implement socio-sport based activities with children. With these activities the KYA will be able to conduct fun and engaging advocacy activities to raise awareness about human right and promote gender equality.

As with all PLAY initiatives, the KYA also took away very practical skills which will enable them to organise and coordinate real actions on the ground for the benefit of their communities. But we don’t want you to just take our word for it so we had a chat with two of the participants after the training to see how they found it!

We started by speaking to Eurolind who said:
"We learnt to use methods with which every child can understand the essence of the topic and I think they are very useful because through play children have the opportunity to learn something easier. It is very important because sometimes doing something physical makes it easier for children to understand what it is about rather than to sit and listen to someone talking."

Then we had a chat to Laurita who said:
“Our goal to get general knowledge through sports is what our community needed, and I think it is necessary for this project to continue to be implemented in Kosovo, specifically in my community. I think the methods I learned from the training were the right methods which helped us to grasp the difficult things easily. And of course, they are useful, both in terms of developing knowledge about the topic of the training and in developing our other skills such as speaking, leadership, team work and more!”

The next step in the partnership is for the KYA to organize and implement an inclusive event for children in Lipjan / Lipljan, with the accompaniment and support of PLAY. They will work with children from local schools and neighbourhoods and use the socio-sport methods they learnt about to raise awareness about human rights and promote gender equality. And with PLAY, thanks to its long term presence in Kosovo and your support, the partnership will continue with further trainings on different educational topics in 2021 and 2022 and more opportunities to practice what they have learnt with their local communities – watch this space!

With Giving Tuesday just around the corner in December, and $1 million of matched funding on offer from GlobalGiving, we are encouraging all of our supporters to make a donation for 2020 and help us continue to support these inspirational young people in Kosovo to lead the changes they want towards a more inclusive society!