Besmir Yvejsi, Kosovo Correspondent
Trestenik village is one of the villages of the Municipality of Peja, located in the West of Kosovo. This village has about 680 inhabitants and is bordered by the following villages: Trubuhoc, Ruhot, Stup and Lutogllava. In the village of Trestenik, there is a primary school called Rilindja which has 345 pupils, 31 teachers and five staff members.
Through an official request from the Directorate of Education of the Municipality of Peja, at the end of February 2020, we received a request to support the Rilindja primary school in Trestenik village, and two weeks after this request, the first cases of Covid-19 started to appear and so we had put this request on pause to support the higher priority projects.
On 21 January 2022, from the Directorate of Education in Peja, it was decided to organise online learning for all pupils, due to the increasing number of cases of virus infections and the Omicron variant. During this two-week break for pupils, Jamaat-e-Ahmadiyya Kosovo and Humanity First had the opportunity to purchase the necessary equipment for online learning and install it through its volunteers, on the request submitted by the Directorate of Education in Peja, respectively by the principal of Rilindja school.
On 3 February 2022, Humanity First made donations to Rilindja school. This donation included some of the necessary items needed for the teachers’ staff room and for classrooms, such as desks, shelves, stationary, a laptop, a video projector with a portable screen, curtains, LED lights and other items. These were all donated by Humanity First.
During the donation ceremony, the following were present: The director of education in the municipality of Peja, the director of legal and property affairs in the municipality of Peja, principal of the primary school Rilindja in Trestenik village, teachers, school staff, representative of Humanity First and volunteers.
The Director of Education, Mr Naser Gega said:
“Investments in schools are the most sacred investments made. They are sacred because they are investments made to the purest of ages – the ages of children. We as teachers have a very sacred mission, the mission is to first mould them with a useful culture and education to represent us with dignity to the future generations. Secondly, to make the school a unique, close and loving school so that when the children wake up in the morning to go to school, they come to school with pleasure and with extraordinary joy.”
The principal of Rilindja, Mr Afrim Haxhnikaj also thanked Humanity First on behalf of the school, teachers, pupils and school staff and said the donation was very useful for them. He said:
“We are very pleased with the investment made by Humanity First. The investment has been something very accurate, very appropriate and I hope it will be something very good for the students. Our cooperation with this association is at the best level, we thank them very much for the support they are giving us and I hope that in the future we will have very good cooperation and so once again I thank you with all my heart on behalf of our school staff for this donation. […] Thank you and great respect to you, and we hope that these generations in the future will utilise all these investments done in the best manner and will be rewarded with knowledge.”
At the end of the ceremony, the principal of the school, Mr Afrim Haxhnikaj invited Alban Zeqiraj Sahib (Project Coordinator of Humanity First Kosovo) to speak, who said:
“First of all, I thank the director of education in Peja who has found time to be present with us today. I also thank the school principal who has done extraordinary work these days. On behalf of Humanity First, thank you for the cooperation and I hope we will have such cooperation in the future.”
Alhamdulillah, this project was successfully completed and some local newspapers covered the event. “Radio Peja” has invited us for an interview to talk about the humanitarian activities of Humanity First in general during the pandemic and for the latest humanitarian projects in particular.