Gjirokastër, South Albania

«I'm not left on my own»

Orphans and children from one parent families suffer particularly from the inadequate education system in Albania. Thanks to an IPA-project they were given supplementary lessons.

Gesjana Erindi is a seventeen-year-old girl whose father died in an accident in 2003. Since then she has been living with her mother and sister in Gjirokastër, the capital of the district of the same name in the south of Albania. Having to support the whole family is a heavy burden for Gesjana’s mother. She has to work too hard and has hardly any time for her daughters.

Gesjana would like to be a nurse. Whether she will ever reach her aim is uncertain because orphans and children from one parent families are particularly affected by the inadequate education system. For various reasons schools and school lessons leave a lot to be desired in Albania. The infrastructure is poor, in the towns the number of students per class is too high, there are no teaching materials available and the teachers are badly trained and earn too little. This has disturbing consequences.

In order to increase their salaries the teachers deliberately neglect their duties. They give their students low marks in their exams and blame them for being lazy. Then they offer them private tuition which has to be paid for. Because in Albania school finishes at 1.30 p.m. there is plenty of time left in the afternoon for the teachers to give such private lessons and to earn some extra money. A private lesson usually costs ten Euros.

Orphans do not have any money to pay for private lessons

The government has passed a law which prohibits teachers from giving their own students private lessons, but it can easily be avoided and is often ignored. Single parents and guardians of orphans simply do not have money to pay for extra lessons for the children.

So that they wouldn’t fall behind, orphans and single parent children were given, supported by IPA, supplementary lessons in Albanian, English, French, Mathematics, Physics, Biology and Chemistry last June and July. Rudina Shajko, who is responsible for the care of orphans in Gjirokastër, had developed the project and presented it to IPA. Its realization cost 10,000 Swiss francs. This sum was raised by the Geschwister Keller foundation for orphans in Frick and by another foundation who wishes to remain anonymous. The teachers were selected by the two managers of the project, Rudina Shajko and Teuta Dashi (who both did a lot of voluntary work), and Bujar Dudumi, the IPA-representative in Gjirokastër. Both women are experienced teachers. In the various courses the sixty-eight boys and girls revised the topics they had been taught during the previous school year, successfully filling any gaps. Thanks to the project they not only improved their knowledge and skills, but they all managed to get into the next year too!

The wish to be a nurse may become reality

“The fact that this summer intensive supplementary lessons were offered was soon known all over Gjirokastër”, Rudina Shajko says. “Again and again people in the streets spoke to me and expressed their gratitude. Once more the inhabitants of Gjirokastër have realized how much work IPA has done in their town.” For Gesjana Erindi the wish to be a nurse is no longer a utopian dream. “At long last I was given the feeling that I’m no longer alone, but that someone is looking after me. Knowing that there are people who actually care for me and the other orphans and who offer us a chance in life has given me a lot of courage.”