Two amamzing weeks of summer camp with the Roma children and girls from Fushe Kruja at ADRA’s compound

This year ADRA Albania in collaboration with the Volunteers from the Mission Trip decided to organize a summer camp in order to motivate and prepare the Roma children for the upcoming school year. This summer camp gave to the Roma children an opportunity to learn on their own terms and to normalize the school behavior while adressing all the deficits that had trubeled until now the children in school.  

Despite the academic topic ADRA staff decided that children learn and explore more about the country where they live in. Thus the topic of this summer camp was “Exploring Albania”.

In this summer camp were present 59 Roma children and girls and 2 non-Roma children from Fushe Kruja, 21 volunteers from United Kingdom, USA and Finland who provided a great deal of support to ADRA´s team and together they successfully implemented this summer camp. 

The goal of the summer camp was to invite, teach and entertain two separate groups of children and girls in two different weeks. The first group was composed by children and girls who have attended ADRA´s community Centre in Fushe Kruja and the second group was composed of children and girls who are attending and have dropped out from the public school. Beside the educational purpose of this camp, ADRA team organized different recreational activities for developing children’s and girl’s social and motor skills such as gym, social games, colouring and crafting activities, and visiting different places close to Tirana.

During the first week, the summer camp was attended by children aged 4-8 years old and girls aged 13-16 years old. They participated in different games and activities such as painting, drawing, playing football, singing, dancing, performing in role play etc. A family of artists from Germany visited the summer camp for two days. They explained and showed to the children how to paint beautiful pictures with acrylic colours on little wooden boards and how to create their own necklaces out of soapstone. The children had a lot of fun and were very creative. At the end, every child had a finished artwork which they proudly showed to their families once they were backing home. 

During the second week, children aged from 8 to 12 attended the summer camp. They also participated in various activities as the previous group. During their stay at ADRA’s compound, the children and girls learned to sing a song in English language titled “Head and shoulders, knees and toes“. The children were really excited at the end. 

This summer camp was concluded with small show that the Roma children and girls organized in collaboration with ADRA team in order to say “Thank you” to all the foreign volunteers who worked hard during these two weeks. In the opening three little Roma girls and one little non-Roma girl performed in a ballet show.  After the ballet performance, the grown up Roma girls danced some traditional Roma music. Afterward, two young Roma boys sang traditional Roma music. In the last part of this all the children danced together in a traditional Roma dance. This amazing show was applauded by the volunteers.

Happy and satisfied the children drove back to their Roma community where they shared their beautiful experiences with their families.

A beautiful day in the Kruja Mountain with the Roma boys

On the 4th of June ADRA education team organized an activity with the young Roma boys that are attending REFLECT project. Together we hiked for two hours the mountain of Kruja until we reached the top of it. The maximum altitude of Kruja Mountain is 1134 m but this altitude didn’t scare us at all. Our team and the young boys took this trip as challenge and began to compete with each other who will reach firstly the top. To encourage this race, our team started to use fanny sentences like “Hey boys I am the solder with a bottle” or “Go Losheee because we are in the end“. 

The time flew as we were involved in interesting conversations and we were having a lot of fun with each other. The path that we passed throw was very difficult but all our challenges were forgotten when we saw the beautiful view at the top of the mountain. From the top of this mountain we sow the whole city of Kruja and her beautiful nature. All the boys were very surprised from this beautiful view; they started to make questions about the sea, the lakes and the mountains that they could see. When we reach the top, we made a picnic with boy where we had fruit juices and sandwiches. 

While ADRA education team was a little bit exhausted, the Roma boys were still full of energy and started to play football. We visited a holy place and rested a little bit to enjoy the beautiful view from the top of the mountain.  After this visit, one of Roma boys named Mario started to sing some traditional Roma songs, he had a very beautiful voice.  While he was singing the other Roma boys clapped their hands and were dancing. Mario told us that he works as a singer in a live club.  

The Roma boys made a lot of fun and jokes and everybody of us noticed how much they enjoyed this day. Already in the age of 16 or 17 the Roma boys are married and they have children. At such young age, they have to struggle with these kinds of responsibilities and to struggle for a normal and decent life due to poverty and poor living conditions. For this reason, ADRA education team wanted to offer a special day to the young Roma men and boys; a day where they can just relax and enjoy the beautiful nature. 

In the end, the Roma boys took the van and went back in their community. All the boys enjoyed the trip to the mountain and it is really important for them that once in a while they can have a day off from their daily problems. In this day they can be and feel what they really are - CHILDREN

               

Celebrating "Festen e Abetares"with the Roma and Albanian children in Fushe Kruja

On the 28th of May 2014, the public school of Fushe-Kruja had organised a celebration event for the children of the first grade who have learned all the 36 letters of the Albanian alphabet. Six Roma children from the Roma Community of Fushe-Kruja and their parents were invited in this activity. Also ADRA education staff was presented during the event. The children had memorised and recited a poem about the alphabet and signed different songs and danced with each other. 

The Roma children performed a poem which they had learned at ADRA centre and also danced the traditional Roma music. The audience were really impressed and applauded and the Roma mothers were very proud of their children.

Unfortunately, the Roma children did not attend the public school regularly during the last year. The hepatitis A incident and the difficulties with the Roma mentality let them miss a lot of classes and so now they are not on the same educational level like the other students.

ADRA education team spoke with the Roma mothers about that and stressed the importance of a regular school attendance. All the Roma mothers agreed with that and understand that it is their responsibility that their children should go to school. Only in this way, they will have the possibility to have better future.

Traditional Roma dances

One Roma girl which attended ADRA centre last year and is now
attending the public school 

Also D. was attending ADRA centre and was yesterday celebrating
with the other Roma and Albanian children at the public school

Health and environmental week in Fushe-Kruja: Raising awareness for health and environmental protection

From 19 to 22 of May 2014, ADRA education team in collaboration with ADRA health team organised a health and environmental week for the Roma women and children in Fushe-Kruja.

Our main focus this week were the young Roma girls and women because they play a key role in the future on their children education.  The topics that ADRA team discussed were malnutrition, healthy food, prevention of diseases and environmental protection.

As you already know, the Roma people in Albania and also in Fushe-Kruja are struggling with many issues and problems in their daily life. The main challenges are poverty, racism and the lack of education. The low level of education also leads to bad nutrition, problems in prevention of different diseases and environmental pollution.

The aim of this week was not only to raise awareness of the Roma for health issues but also to reflect on environment issues. Therefore ADRA education and health team had prepared many materials and activities to make the problems more visible to participants. In the same time our aim was to find solutions together to these issues.

On Monday, ADRA health team was discussing with the Roma women and girls about malnutrition. To distinguish healthy food from non-healthy food, ADRA health team showed the Roma women how much packages of sugar are in a can of coca cola or energy drinks and how much sugar normally you should consume during one day. ADRA health team also used a picture of the human body to explain the digestion process and how too much sugar and fat harm our body and our organs. In the end of this activity, ADRA health team gave examples for healthy food and what we should eat in our daily life in order to take care of our body.

On Wednesday, our focus was to talk about the problems of environmental pollution but also about environmental protection. Therefore, we showed the Roma women different pictures of a clean environment but also pictures of a polluted and dirty environment. All Roma women agreed that they preferred the clean environment and that they want to see their children growing up in a peaceful, clean and natural environment.

To demonstrate the problem of environmental pollution and their relation with our health, we made an activity with the Roma women where we pointed out how plastic garbage will find the way back from the rivers on our plate and how dangerous this is for our organism. We showed to them the risks and consequences of polluted water and food.

The Roma women were very concerned about this information and also about the fact that they and their families are living in a very polluted environment.

In the end, we showed them some possible ways how they can prevent and decrease environmental pollution. For example, ADRA team raised awareness that they should use as less plastic bags as possible and that they should use a bin. Lubjana, one of the Roma women of the Roma Community in Fushe-Kruja said: “We want to live in a clean environment but nobody of us has a bin at home and the big trash bin in the street is every time full with garbage because the municipality does not empty it regularly.“

We explained the Roma women how they can easy use plastic bags from the shops as trash bags and that they should no throw their garbage into the river and into the street.

We completed the environmental day with a cleaning activity of the Roma community in Fushe-Kruja, were the Roma children as well as the Roma women participated. This day everybody was active to make our environment in Fushe-Kruja a little bit cleaner, more beautiful and to set an example for a better and healthier tomorrow.