The girl of Mokra street
Within the first five minutes of meeting her, Erisjena Rruplli, 17, gracefully rejects all yours expectations and breaks all stereotypes of children and adolescents from her neighbourhood in one of the poorest towns in Albania.
Instead of complaining, she proclaims that she likes her life very much, even after having just returned from a trip to New York. Erisjena is a different girl than she was four years ago. Her community is different as well. Now, she hopes that as a result of her recent efforts, her country (and other countries) can change as well.
In the beginning
Erisjena’s story begins with her finding herself and then reaching out to others. Like so many teenagers, she suffered from lack of self-esteem; a situation that was suffocating her. Today, Erisjena has found her path and she has created a group of likeminded teens.
Not only does she walk with confidence down her path, she also encourages other students to join her. Recently, she led a training for all 800 Librazhd high school students on the topic of self-esteem. And, she is working with a range of projects which she is implementing, together with a handful of teen-agers and teachers. “We want to transform our town and give breath to it,” says Erisjena. “It seems to us that this breath has begun to be felt.”
It was her energy and enthusiasm which brought her to a hall full of ambassadors and officials of the United Nations, recently, an opportunity she never would have expected.
“It was decided that the session on Youth Issues should be moderated by one of the youth participants,” she points out, sharing how her peers choose her to be the moderator, just the night before. Although her instincts initially told her to reject the responsibility, she instead rose to the challenge. “I thought of the confidence the others had showed for me and of the fact that during that session I would represent not only Albania, but the whole Europe. I said [to myself] ‘this is maybe an opportunity given to me only once in my life and I should not lose it.’”
That night, while the others slept, she spent most of the night writing and rehearsing what she would say in front of the mirror. By morning, she was ready.
“Hello! I am Erisjena, from Albania, Europe and I am 17 years old,” she said in clear English, after having introduced to her peers who would also take the floor.
By the end of the session, she was so familiar with the moderation she felt that the text she held in her hands was not complete, so she went off script. “We, young girls and boys, said a lot in this session,” she began. “But, it seemed to me that there are still many other things to be said…everywhere, in poor and developing countries, there are boys and girls full of passion, ready to offer their time and energy, but they do not have the possibility to express themselves. They must be given the possibility to raise their voices… And, they must be heard,” she remembers, unashamed or her appeal. “I had to say that,” she says. “After all, in that hall, there were a lot of high officials,” she explains.
On a mission
The story of Erisjena is that of “the girl next door.” The sincere and lively 17-year-old, in jeans and sport shoes, has no time for make-up or fashion. Instead, she invests her time trying to change the world, a task she believes entirely possible.
“I am enjoying my adolescence to the maximum,” says Erisjena. “I have time for everything and I do everything. I learn, I do my homework, I stay with my family, I go out for a cup of coffee with my friends, and I babysit my neighbour’s child. Certainly, I do have time to travel to New York, as well,” she says, laughing. As usual, today also she woke up at 6 o’clock in the morning in order to do her homework.
“New York was very beautiful” she says. “But, I think that even here, in Librazhd, we can live and make beautiful things, too.” Her trip to New York opened her eyes, not only because she visited the city itself, but also because she spent her time speaking with and listening to the delegates from other countries as well.
“We do have many problems in Albania,” she said. “But, we should not surrender. We are free and we can organize beautiful things,” she says, contrasting it with the experiences of her peers. “The youth in other countries experience every day wars, thirst, and hunger. One of them, a boy from Uganda, told me that he had seen people dying in their efforts to find any spring of clean water. [Indeed,] his sister died in this way, unable to reach to the spring of water. And, this boy is only 14 years old.”
She recalled how that same boy expressed wisdom far beyond his years. “One day he said to me: ‘Millions of dollars have been given to us for water supply in the area where I live. The problem in Africa is not the water, the problem is the governments. But, to have a fair government, we—the common people—have to raise our voices and demand [it]’.”
Inspired by the accounts of her peers, Erisjena added, “We, too, should do the same thing. I know Albania has a lot of problems, but nothing can be improved by just waiting,” she said. “I‘ll do my part.”
A teenager girl in action
And she, together with others, is doing her part in Librazhd. It all began when she participated in a training for young leaders, organized by World Vision Albania.
“I have always been shy,” admits Erisjena. “For many years, I was afraid to raise my hand and answer [on] class. I was afraid of saying anything wrong… During a whole year I didn’t utter a single word even though I was often asked .”
Eventually, Erisjena participated in World Vision’s workshops. “[Slowly], I began to say a word, then two words. Now, I cannot stop speaking. It has to do with self-confidence and my life has changed a lot because I do see the things differently now,” she says, laughing.
Erisjena wanted to give back to her school, and help her schoolmates. “Before the training on self-confidence began to be implemented, we did a survey of the opinions of the high school students. Almost none of them knew the meaning of self-confidence. And those who thought they did translated it into ‘self–likeness’,” she explains.“But, self-confidence does not mean to like yourself. It means: to know yourself and accept it, to know your strong and weak points, to concentrate on the strong points and to work on the weak ones. This is self-confidence,” she continued.
The survey brought to light that none of the high school students in Librazhd had high levels of self- confidence, putting them, and the future of the community, at risk.
A girl with a plan
“We have just founded a social work group at school,” says Erisjena. Their first project is to make sure all the students have the necessary texts to succeed in school. The project is simple: a group of high school students has taken the initiative to gather the textbooks that other students have used in previous classes and to deliver them to students who cannot afford to buy their own.
There is also a group dedicated to sports that, in trying to think how to improve their facilities came up with the idea to have a sports championship. “We have just finished writing a project for the reconstruction of our gym,” explains Erisjena. “We are going to present it to those who can support us.”
Why the United Nations?
This year sessions of the General Assembly of the United Nations (September 23- October 4, 2013) in New York, were overloaded with concern. Many official promises, put down in black and white, have not been kept. In 2000, the UN-member states, who were gathered at the UN Millennium Summit, promised to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger in the developing countries by2015. We are now on the eve of the deadline and all the countries of the world have realized that they will not be met everywhere. In addition to shortfalls, there are now new problems and solutions, which were not taken into consideration or did not exist in 2000.
The main theme of the General Assembly was the Millennium Development Goals with a lot of discussions as to what is going to happen after 2015. Since some of the goals have to do with children and youth, World Vision and Plan International, two large international organizations, thought it would be appropriate to give the opportunity for the youth to raise their voices there.
“Children and young people should be more present in the identification of the new goals after 2015,” says Jurgena Hajdara, World Vision’s Youth Programmes manager. “That’s why the forum “Amplifying the Voices of Children” took place in the framework of the General Assembly of the United Nations. The aim of the session was to give the children the chance to express their own opinions on the way the Millennium Development Goals are implemented, as well as on the achievements the governments have reached in different countries and what more they can do.”
The youth came from: Brazil, Mexico, Bangladesh, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Pakistan, India and Albania. Erisjena presented the problems of the European youth, using, as a reference, a report about the situation of youth across 10 different European countries.
As a result, those present could conclude that of utmost importance, it is important to include the youth’s voices in the development of the post-2015 goals. But, it is not enough to include their voices in the drafting of the document. “Universal ratification is needed,” declared Maria Santos Pais, Special Representative on Violence against Children to the United Nations General Secretary, Ban Ki Moon.
Many countries have yet to ratify or sign the Convention on the Rights of the Children and its additional protocols. “Since it came into power, in 2002, this protocol has been ratified from 152 countries, 20 states have signed it but not yet ratified it and 23 other countries have neither signed nor ratified it - said Pais.