Sara’s return to school

Sara lives in a small apartment of an old four-story building, in the Northern city of Peshkopi, where snow is heavy and challenges to secure a living are great.

For over a year, Sara has been helping her mother with the chores and looking after her younger brother and sister.

Although the 9-year-old wished to go back to school, her dream grew distant by the day, because she and her sister had dropped out of school some time ago since their family could not afford the necessary educational materials.

Sara and her sister joined the World Vision Sponsorship program.

It helped in making Sara’s dream to go back to school a reality, by providing the necessary school supplies for her to learn with her peers.

“I was so happy when you gave me my new school bag, notebooks and equipment to go back to school,” said Sara. “I used to cry every night because it was impossible for me to go back to school. My father would tell me that we had no money for books and food.”

Sara's family consists of 5 members: Sara, her father, her pregnant mother, her sister and her brother. They belong to the Egyptian community and are faced with multiple problems, which are mostly of economic character since they cannot afford to meet their family needs. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, her father, Salvador, took odd jobs in construction, loading and unloading, whilst her mother worked in the municipal road maintenance sector. However, she is now unemployed because she is expecting her fourth child.

This family lives in a small apartment, consisting of two rooms, under minimum living conditions. At the corner of the living room, where they all live together, you can see the fridge. The mother, Vahidja, says that it is mainly empty, except for the beginning of the month when they get economic aid or food packages from World Vision.

There is little furniture, which has mainly been gifted by relatives, and a wood stove where they all gather during cold winter nights.

They would sit around the wood stove during the lockdown, and girls were sad because they could not attend online classes for some time. Recently, their aunt gave them a phone with Internet connection.

“We only had dad’s phone, but it didn’t have any Internet connection. During the lockdown, we couldn’t attend online classes. When we later talked to our friends in the neighbourhood, they would discuss about online math exercises, but we lagged behind,” said Sara. “Now that we are at home and schools are closed, our aunt gave us a phone with internet connection and we communicate with our teacher via text messages about our assignments.”

World Vision equipped the two sisters with school supplies, enabling them to go back to school. In order to lighten the heavy economic burden of the family, World Vision provided food packages in May 2019 and December 2020. This family has recently joined different group activities and training on how to have a healthy family.

“We are so happy to have gone back to school. We promised our teacher that we wouldn’t miss a single class,” says Sara, a hopeful little girl who dreams of finishing school, becoming successful and helping her family one day.