Investing in Kosovo's future

PEF’s Deputy CEO, Sophie Livingstone has just returned from a visit to Kosovo to see Women for Women International’s work giving disadvantaged women a springboard to independence.

When I arranged to visit Women for Women International in Kosovo to learn more about PEF’s investment, being driven around in the President’s car wasn’t quite the mode of transport I was expecting. But it is testament to the respect for their work that Nezafete Sejdiu, the First Lady of Kosovo, spent a whole day with us, handing out certificates to 200 women graduating from the charity’s year long programme and joining in the traditional dancing that followed.

Women for Women International empowers women survivors of war to move towards economic self sufficiency. In Kosovo, 20,000 women were raped during the ‘ethnic cleansing’ that only ended in 1999 with the intervention of NATO. Since launching in 2000, Women for Women International in Kosovo has helped more than 14,000 women. PEF is funding a Women’s Opportunity Centre, a permanent headquarters in the capital city, Pristina, for the organisation to deliver its programmes and host services for programme graduates to support the development of businesses they create and help them to play a role in civil society.

Development of enterprise is crucial for Kosovo’s economy. During years of fighting and ethnic violence, the country’s infrastructure was destroyed ­ now Kosovo imports 80% of what it consumes.

According to Gjergi Dedaj, the Deputy Minister for Labour and Social Welfare, another powerful champion of Women for Women’s work, unemployment is officially 45%, but in reality is more like 65%. He told me that Kosovo’s poverty level is the highest in Europe and that 20% live on less than $1 a day. It is also Europe’s youngest population, with 70% under 30 yeras of age.

First Lady of Kosova, Nezafete Sejdiu with WfWI’s Kosovo Director Hamide Latifi and Deputy Director Majlinda Mazelliu on the site of the Women’s Opportunity Centre, funded by PEF.

The focus of my trip was to find out more about Women for Women’s work in Kosovo, and to find out how plans for the centre are progressing. I visited the site that has been purchased in the centre of Kosovo (pictured) and met Pristina’s newly elected Mayor, Professor Isa Mustafa, who confirmed his commitment to support the charity’s centre, made during his election campaign. This commitment is important in securing municipal services such as water, electricity and waste, as well as access to the site. Women for Women has recently secured Ilir Rooliqi as project manager for the centre. A lecturer at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture at Pristina Public University, he has a long history of delivering construction projects for both the private and NGO sectors and will co-ordinate the construction of the centre over the coming year. Building work is due to start in late October and the centre will be opened in July 2009.

A WfWI graduate and trainee at her hairdressing business in a village north of Pristina.

The importance of the centre, and of Women for Women’s work really hit home for me when we visited the business set up by a young woman who recently graduated from the WfWI programme. Her passion for hairdressing has been realised with the support of her husband who raised funds to build her a small salon in a village north of Pristina (pictured). Despite being situated in an incredibly remote area, accessible via potholed roads that would be impassable in winter, this young woman has five customers a day and had already taken on a young trainee keen to learn the trade and set up a business of her own in another village. Her determination is all the more inspiring given that she is in a community ravaged by war, where all too frequent graveyards and memorials bear testament to whole families massacred during the conflict. The support of WfWI in setting up, and sustaining, this business will be invaluable if she is to make it a lasting enterprise ­ important not just for her livelihood but for the status of all local women.

Another lasting impression is the enthusiasm with which I was welcomed by women at the graduation ceremony, for being from a country that had helped end the devastating conflict, and for being associated with an organisation that was helping to build a positive future. One woman told me how she had lived in the woods for 6 months during the conflict, terrified at what she would find when it was safe to return home. She has now rebuilt her house, but it is the rebuilding of so much else that cannot be seen that is so vital, and that WfWI is pioneering. The Women’s Opportunity Centre will make their work both prominent and permanent, empowering women for the long term and helping them to rebuild their communities and their future.