COMMUNITY ACTIVISM AND YOUTH INCLUSION
Everyone’s activism is translated into the change we want in society. The will and wish of youth for activism isn’t lacking, but it’s very important for conditions for activism to be created, and for support to be offered by the country’s institutions. The will, responsibility, honorability, integrity, support and dedication makes commitment from each one of us more powerful, for society.
Illustration: Argjira Kukaj
As a young woman with a lot of willpower and enthusiasm I always awoke with the ideas that passed in my mind to do something for the good of the community that surrounds me, ideas which I didn’t have anywhere to address them. My enthusiasm continued even more with my participation in different activities that took place in our country’s capital city, but in the city where I live, Gjilan, such activities were scarce in comparison to the willpower I had. In a country level as well as in Gjilan another key issue is unemployment. As a result of unemployment and the lack of activities for youth, their routine is translated into frequenting different coffees and overusing social networks. We thought that the ideal way to put this worry to rest and join our ideas as young people was to create a non-governmental organization, where all young people can gather by starting initiatives for the community’s well-being. We got the support needed for opening the organization by the leader of the organization “T-Consulting”, Fisnik Isufi, who helped us in all the procedures for the initiative of opening the “City Volunteers” organization, which is now functional since the beginning of the year 2019.
The first initiative we took for functionalizing the organization was the monitoring of communal spending’s in the municipalities of the Anamorava region, where from each municipality we’ve included youth from all communities in implementing this initiative, we shared the data we gathered from the relevant municipalities with civilians through bulletins, and this initiative was expected extremely well by the civilians. Taking into consideration the fact that a part of the budget is from the civilians’ taxes, through this initiative they had an opportunity to be informed on what politics most of their municipality’s budget is focused on. The second initiative we took as a youth organization, is organizing educative, cultural and artistic activities in an open environment.
Young people from all communities had the opportunity to be included.
We as organization, will continue with other initiatives such as in: education, culture and environment protection, by including as many volunteers as possible in the activities of these initiatives to liven them into the community. So, each young person has the opportunity to be included in our initiatives’ activities, to contribute in their community. Everyone’s activism is translated into the change we want in society. The will and wish of youth for activism isn’t lacking, but it’s very important for conditions for activism to be created, and for support to be offered by the country’s institutions. The will, responsibility, honorability, integrity, support and dedication makes commitment from each one of us more powerful, for society.
About the author: Ardianë Halimi is 21 years old from Gjilan, student in ‘Kadri Zeka’ University in Gjilan, in the judicial field.
Resource Center –ATRC.
