Youth demand a new chapter in the poor children’s life book
On the International Day of Human Solidarity, December 20, 2012, youth from the Lezha Area Development Programme in northeast Albania worked with World Vision and other youth from the city to pool their fresh ideas and great power to raise awareness on behalf of children.
Recently, the people of Lezha have seen a dramatic increase in the number of exploited children turning to the streets. Seeing this rise motivated the youth to try to do something for these children, and to broadcast the message that it is very wrong to exploit these children.
To convey this message, about 50 youth performed a Flash Mob dance entitled “In Searching for the Sun”, in the Lezha centre. It is their hope that the dance will help raise a voice on behalf of the many “voiceless” children in the streets.
The group started to prepare two weeks previous for a very professional presentation to the audience. The flash mob group used lots of banners with clearly written awareness messages (on behalf of many of those how cannot voice these messages), such as “I have lost my dreams”, “I feel lonely”, ”Is there someone who can protect me?”, “Why?”, “If we are equal in front of the law why do I feel discriminated against?”, and “Try to see the world from my eyes”.
With the motto “It is time to change”, youth also invited local media and TV to better get the message out to the people who were passing by. For them, youth, it was the first initiative this way.
“Around here I see so many little children, mostly Roma, dropping out of [school] early, ending up working on the streets of Lezha, or doing hard jobs like in construction and receiving only very little money, sometimes not even enough to buy a piece of bread to eat. This “tragedy of children” really shocked my mind to seriously search for something that can be done to change this tragic routine,” said Denis Bardhaj, 17, of Zejmen commune, Lezha. She was one of the World Vision Youth Group members who came up with the idea of organizing the Flash mob on the children’s behalf.
As a resident who knows the old Albanian mentality, Dioniz continued: “Little children are more exploited in the beginning. At 12 or 15 years old they end up doing the hard, gruelling jobs in construction. What breaks my heart is that employers exploit and mistreat them routinely, offering them only strenuous jobs at very low pay. Children can’t raise their voice on the matter, because nobody cares about them. Even their parents mostly don’t do anything to speak up about this because they need the meagre money they earn. As long as the children bring just some money home, everything else is acceptable to parents,” Dioniz explains.
“It is such a joy and blessing to work with these enthusiastic youth,” says Ori Demaliaj, the Child Protection World Vision Coordinator. “They have [a] lot of energy and drive and the wonderful thing about this is they contribute to the well-being of their community, helping others improve their lives. What we did today was only the beginning of many other such initiatives we as World Vision will continue to follow with youth’s collaboration, ideas and energy,” says Demaliaj.
“Our desire and will is that one day these children themselves march the streets of the city and fight for their rights. Fight against any cultural barrier, and people who want to exploit these innocent creatures and benefit from them,” said the youth in one common voice.
We really do hope and we are quite positive that this will start one day.
Watch the Flash Mob video here:
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Even though Albania ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1992, and passed the Law for the Protection of Child Rights in November 2010 (2), abuse in all of its forms towards children is widespread in most Albanian communities. Studies show that there is not a functioning, well-established child protection system in place.
According to the 2012 Progress Report of EU Child Rights for Albania, protection issues remain a serious concern in Albania. Though official records are lacking, many children in Albania suffer from violence, abuse, neglect, exploitation, trafficking and discrimination.
According to the same report, in Albania the number and quality of child protection and welfare services, such as child protection units - responsible for identifying, referring and assisting children who are at risk and/or victims of neglect, abuse, violence and exploitation at the local level – has increased recently but continues to remain low in terms of financial and human resources, preventative focus and sustained impact. In addition, further investments in capacity building and overall support are required to ensure adequate operations of the child protection units and other services in Albania.
The World Vision child protection program is working to strengthen the National child protection system in Albania, advocating for Child Rights, procedures and practice.