On Sunday 11 December, we had an excellent talk from Mark Powell on his travels in the Balkans and Kosovo in particular. Mark mentioned a charity, The Ideas Partnership, which works to help children in Kosovo who would otherwise not receive any education. With Mark’s agreement, Geoff Clough made a donation to the charity, on behalf of the section, to thank Mark for travelling all the way from Hastings for the talk. Below is the reply we received from Kosovo so the money has been put to very good use – Happy Christmas!

Dear Geoff, Mark and everyone at the BMW Club Oxford Section,

We want to thank everyone for the kind donation! We are going to use it for the children in our kindergarten, to provide them with healthy snacks during the activities.

The kindergarten came as an idea from the Changemakers, a group of individuals from the communities of Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian who saw the need for an early start in education with the children, getting them used to school environment and spending more time with other children. And this proved to be a very successful initiative, thanks to the support we have from people like you, after the first year of the kindergarten, the number of first graders dropping out of school dropped by more than 90% compared to the previous year!

Every day during the activities, we provide the children with a healthy snack. The cost per snack is 0.25 Euro per child per day, or 5 Euro per child per month, so your donations will cover the costs for 12 children for one month. The donation was very welcome especially because our budget line that is used to cover the snacks is running out, and we want the children to be well fed, as well as well educated. And now thanks to you, we can keep doing that.

And again, thank you very much on behalf of the children you’ve supported in Kosovo! Wishing you all the best, Donjetë Jashari

If anyone would like to make a donation to support the Ideas Partnership work in Kosovo please click here.

PS Thanks to Carla McKenzie for here excellent report and photos on Facebook