Successful ideas, successful partnerships
In partnership with UNDP we produced Kosovo Green Pages, a guide to good green ideas in Kosovo downloadable or printed on recycled paper.
After several years' preparation we arranged the twinning of Prishtina's Ethnological Museum with the Cambridge&County Folk Museum. Two craftswomen from Cambridgeshire came to Prishtina to demonstrate their traditional skills, and then two ethnologists and a filigree craftsman from Prishtina visited Cambridge to share ideas and experiences.
Catch-up classes in 2011 and sustained extra lessons and lobbying in 2012 got 120 children from Fushë Kosovë's Neighbourhood 29 registered for school who would not otherwise have been, and helped many of them to stay there. You can read more about their achievement, and the variety of our other activities in support of the community, on the dedicated page here;
One special by-product of that work was the children's own This is Neighbourhood 29 photo project;
Six friends from Port Isaac brought some Cornish colour and creativity to Fushë Kosovë. Billy Hawkins (who's one of the legendary Fisherman's Friends) and his wife Barbara run a pottery, and along with Cheryl and Harry and Lisa and Liz they ran art and music workshops for the children of Neighbourhood 29. Lots of paint, lots of noise, lots of fun.
We devised and marketed the Kosova Kards micro-finance project for handmade greetings cards decorated with filigree;
We've campaigned against unnecessary plastic bags;
We donated books to Mitrovica library and Gjakova Teqe;
We saved an old Ottoman house in Prishtina;
We gathered resources for the Gjakova safe house for victims of domestic violence;
We promote local mineral water;
We took on tour an exhibition of photographs celebrating Kosovo's culture and environment;
We ran a photography competition to show the effects of plastic bags on the landscape, with the support of the good souls of UNICEF's Kosovo Innovations Lab. It was all on facebook, of course.
We brought to Kosovo an exhibition of photographs of the country from 1956 taken by a British University botanical expedition;
For the 2010 Rugova Summer Programme, with partners ERA and the Balkan Peace Park Project we rehabilitated the derelict school in the lovely mountain village of Reka e Allages and used it as the base for ten days of lessons and activities. 38 children camped, and hiked, learned about the environment and how they can damage it and how they can save it, and they devised their own micro-projects to improve it in their own villages. Meanwhile a group of international volunteers did some teaching and some learning of their own and, thanks to the wonderful hospitality of Reka e Allages, saw for themselves the possibilities for sustainable tourism in the Rugova Valley.
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