You are part of the family…I am here to help you!

Friday, October 20, 2017

We are on your side, just like your parents are and we want to help you and see you succeed. I want you to be happy too. We count you as a family. So please just ask if you need help. I know you worked hard this past summer and I appreciate that. Make your studies your first priority during school and just ask me if you need any further financial help to be happy at the university. I will be as generous as I can be like you are my daughter. I want you not to worry. I am for you and you can trust me.” – writes John in a letter exchanged with Irsa, one of the children he sponsored from 2009.

 

She has just turned eighteen and is ready to go to the university. The poor economic conditions of a big family composed of 8 persons where only the mother and the father work, would not allow her to buy all the necessary food, school books, clothes and rent a place where she can live away from her home and closer to the world of knowledge. She even tried to work with long hours during the summer in a factory for two and a half months. Irsa shares with John’s family all the emotions and feelings of those days when she earned some more money to help the family, but at the same time she gained so much “experience” and learned how to value the hard work of her parents to provide the daily bread for the family.

 

Work was tiring and exhausting, and we didn’t get paid a lot of money, or just “enough”. It is not about the money. I am just so glad I made it! I learned how it is to work like my parents do every day. I learned how people aren’t always nice and friendly. I learned how to communicate better with the ones around me. I learned how it was for hundreds of people there, to not have a real profession. I learned where could I had been stacked if I didn’t finish my school or studies. I know I am still young and I have to learn a lot, but this was one of the best experiences of my life, because I took a lot of lessons I’ll need in my future.”- says Irsa.

 John works as a firefighter and his wife as a nurse and they are so enthusiastic that have the possibility to support a very smart girl with a big heart, like Irsa. They say that they feel very proud of the results she had in school, mostly A-s.  The two favorite subjects of Irsa are Mathematics a subject that the youth nowadays do not prefer a lot and Medicine a profession that the girl wants to use for helping other people. 

 

18 years old Irsa says that thanks to John’s support finally she is seeing a light in the end of the tunnel. “I am very happy that you are proud of me. I feel so much joy because you have changed my life in all the meanings and ways. It is so beautiful that I can study Medicine or Mathematics. They are both my passions in life and despite everything, I’ll never forget about your help, or helping other people in the world.  Your kids are lucky to have good people like you as their parents.” – says the girl with the hope that one day she will have the possibility to meet the family personally and to express her deep gratitude.

 

The results from the university are now public and the girl has just started the university studies for Mathematics in Vlora city.

Irsa’s family had the golden chance to have a daughter like Irsa and a friend like John. The help given to Irsa to study at the university, it is not actually only for her. In the future Irsa will be the support and the inspiration for the two other sisters and her brother to continue a higher education. As Irsa says she is writing her first chapter of her future. Now, her world is not in black and white anymore, but it is full of colors and all this thanks to John and his family.