Project Details
Hello from Shkoder, Albania! A moderately sized city (given the size of the country) located in Northern Albania.
We are members of Trokitja NGO, KWANIS International, SOS Children's Village Albania, and a US Peace Corps Volunteer residing in Shkoder, Albania. We are here to ask for your help in the bettering the lives of the youth here in Shkoder, Albania.
There are not many activities here for youngsters to take part in after-school hours, especially during the summer months. The current community center is also the local school house. As far as after-school or summer activities go, there are not many items with which the youth can play. The school is surrounded by gravel and blacktop. There is plenty of space, but no activity areas for playing sports or areas for small children to safely play.
To help with this, we would like to create a safe and welcoming area for the youth to play. This would mean creating an area that not only has activities for the youth to enjoy, but is also safe to enable the parents to feel safe allowing their children to play. This project would promote community development, youth development, youth fitness and health, and volunteerism. The project would be located at the Community Center, Ndre Mjeda School. It would focus on not only creating this safe environment for children, but also a place where families could participate in summer activities with their children during the summer months and special activities during the school year. In total, this project would focus on creating a fun, safe, and physically active area for youth and their families to enjoy, help to prevent inactivity and the development of non-communicable diseases of youth and parents, and promote volunteerism and family togetherness.
This project will greatly improve the local community center and the community as a whole. The playground improvements will add seating for both parents and children, create safe play areas for children of all ages, create an area for summer camps and clubs, and create an area great for family activities. Through the creation of these areas there will be the use of recyclable materials both tires and plastic bottles, a safer environment than concrete, an increase physical activity, and an increase in available activities for the local youth and their families. In addition to improving the actual playground comes a great opportunity to create a space to utilize as areas for after school clubs and camps to take place. This is is very important for those who cannot afford to travel and outlying villages to attend. Also, the proximity of this area to the residential area would allow the parents to feel more at ease given the development of after-school or summer camps and clubs are a relatively new concept in this country.
Overall, this project would create a dramatically improved community center with a safe children's play area, a versatile recreational area for different types of activities, and will have a lasting impact on many generations to come. To ensure this playground will be maintained, the project will rely greatly on community involvement. Meaning, the community will be providing assistance with advertising, painting, landscaping, collecting of materials, along with any other support they can provide. Community improvement projects which rely significantly on community involvement and support create a feeling of ownership and responsibility between the community members and the project. It is because of this ownership that these types of projects are more likely to come to fruition, be completed, and be maintained for years to come.
However, although there are students and community members very willing to volunteer, great use of recyclable materials, promotion of volunteerism and physical activity, there are no funds available. Any amount of funds would be beneficial to the project and would be greatly appreciated. The funds would go to purchase/located tires and other recyclable materials from the area, seek reduced materials from local vendors, purchase items that cannot be recycled, and to complete the playground in a fun and kid-friendly manner. The scope of this project is not only the betterment of the outdoor facilities for the youth and their families, but also to promote awareness and volunteerism throughout the city.
