Shpresa Sefedini’s eyes light up when she smiles. And she smiles a lot—she smiles as she talks about her studies, her family and her plans for the future. She smiles while walking around Prishtina, stopping to hug and catch up with her friends in between her many exams and church meetings. And she has a lasting smile from the recent wedding of a close friend.
When she is not smiling, she thinks about the hardships women and young people in Kosovo face or the persecution she has experienced because of her faith, her eyes remain intently engaged.
She sees the shape of the world around her, and it inspires and challenges her.
Sefedini, 19, studies preschool education at University of Prishtina, and she is finishing her second year. Throughout her life, she has known struggle and fortune.
Sefedini has grown up around the conflict in Kosovo and its effects. She was born in Germany, after her parents and two siblings moved there as refugees in 1991. When she was five years old, Sefedini and her family moved back to a changed Kosovo. She spent eight years at primary school and then attended an American high school in Prishtina.
But as a student in Kosovo, and with two older siblings, she understands the struggle to pay for education.
“For any student, the schedule at the university is not working friendly, and we don’t have a lot of part-time jobs here, so you either work full-time or you don’t work at all,” Sefedini said. “Students usually are supported by their family or they just can’t do it.”
Women especially have struggled to gain equality in education and the workplace throughout Kosovo. Though much progress can be seen in larger cities such as Prishtina, women from villages or poorer areas are often stuck in situations without education or jobs, and therefore, without money.
According to the Kosovo 2012 Labor Force Survey, fewer than one in five women of working age in Kosovo have jobs. Though unemployment is a problem for both women and men in Kosovo, over half of men of working age are employed.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) reported in 2014 that age and a lack of flexible working hours are the main reasons women in Kosovo are unemployed. Many employers will not hire women who are of the age of potential pregnancy. Also, women who have families tend to struggle to find jobs with accommodating hours.
“If they work in supermarkets and have the second shift until 11 o’clock, the buses are until 10 and they cannot travel,” said Nora Zhilivoda, Job Placement Officer at Women for Women International in Kosovo. “They cannot work until 11 o’clock at night, but some of the companies have them work until 11, 12, and these are some of the problems that they have and they couldn’t work.”
Zhilivoda is familiar with the struggles women face when trying to get a job. And even when factors such as age or work hours do not impede, there is another important element of getting a job: education.
“Without education they cannot go farther. If the women are educated, also their kids will be,” said Zhilivoda. “After they go to the university, they will have education, they can work, they will have the wages and they will have a better relationship even in the family, and they will be more powerful.”
But often, uneducated women are stuck in a cycle. They need an education to get a job, but education is expensive. So they need a job to get money to pay for school, but without education they are not hired.
That’s where Flora comes in.
Flora Stationery is a nonprofit organization that sells journals and cards to fund scholarships for women pursuing a college education in Kosovo. These women are from Kosovo and studying in Kosovo, at University of Prishtina.
Flora’s mission states that “Flora Stationery does not rescue women from poverty, rather we empower them with an education while enabling the consumer to be a part of this inspiring process of funding futures.”
With the sale of 25 journals from Flora, a woman can be funded for an entire semester of university. This encompasses tuition and book fees for the students.
It all started when one of Flora’s co-founders, Ashley VanBuskirk, studied and worked abroad in Kosovo for a summer. VanBuskirk took classes with Miami University professors and worked as an intern for Kosovalive News Agency. After meeting a young woman struggling to pay for her college education, VanBuskirk was inspired to start a nonprofit, Flora, that would support college scholarships for women in Kosovo.
But because education and employment are closely related issues for Kosovar women, non-governmental organizations such as Women for Women work to prepare females for school and the workplace.
“I coordinate the project equipping young Kosovar women to succeed in the job market,” explains Zhilivoda. “The women have 1-year program. They have training in life skills, in business vocational skills, and service skills. And after they finish the program, if they want or if they need, they can come in our office and register, we do the mediation with the employer and the employee.”
VanBuskirk and Zhilivoda work together to find college-bound women in Kosovo and fund them through Flora scholarships. Many of these women obtained Flora scholarships after graduating from the Women for Women program.
When Sefedini learned about Flora, she was interested because she heard they were looking to support girls purposefully, students who are actively making change in Kosovo. Sefedini fits this definition. She chose to study preschool education not just because she loves working with children, but also because she wants to be a positive force in her country.
“I don’t know if I want to finish university and work at a normal preschool,” said Sefedini, “but I do like kids and I do think working with children is something that impacts the future of this country.”
The scholarships Flora provides alleviate stress from these young women as they pursue their studies.
“It made it easier to not think about the semester payment, to know that somebody covered it,” said Sefedini. “If you look at it, it’s not a lot of money to pay for the semester. But if you don’t have a job, you need to find somebody to pay.”
Albina Ahrmeti, 20, agrees. Ahrmeti is finishing her first year at University of Prishtina and is studying preschool education, but has dreams of being a dentist. Her studies in high school prepared her for a possible career in dentistry, and her classes now challenge her to think and study in a new way.
Like Sefedini, Ahrmeti has two siblings. Being close with her family, she struggled to know if going to college would be a good decision.
“If you are part-time, it’s still expensive,” said Ahrmeti. “And even if you work, you can’t afford it. And if you go full-time you can’t miss any of your classes, your exams, you can’t work, you can’t help your family. And it is really hard to get accepted.”
But also like Sefedini, Ahrmeti is now able to focus on her education rather than how to pay for it.
Not only are women being funded for college through Flora, but the nonprofit gives other women in Kosovo opportunities to get involved. Besiana Kryeziu, a graduate student studying art at the University of Prishtina, partnered with Flora to create floral artwork for the covers of the journals.
Kryeziu painted two design options offered by Flora—The Rozë and The Blu—both inspired by images of flowers. She is working on new designs. She uses watercolor to paint and draws on a combination of techniques learned through her coursework as well as her own style.
Though painting for the Flora journals has given Kryeziu another opportunity to showcase her work, her main reason for partnering with VanBuskirk is Flora’s mission.
“The idea of the project was so great for helping those young women in Kosovo,” said Kryeziu. “Because so many girls here don’t have money to study. They have to choose between work or study.”
Kryeziu was chosen as an artist for Flora by participating in a contest she heard about from her professors, whom VanBuskirk contacted. She has also shown and sold pieces of art through many humanitarian-based exhibitions.
“I had an exhibition this year for helping children with autism,” said Kryeziu. “I also participated in an exhibition in Presheva to help children who are orphans, to buy them presents for the New Year. If there’s an exhibition for humanitarian reasons, I will go there. I will be a part of it every time.”
Though Flora has given women such as VanBuskirk, Zhilivoda and Kryeziu opportunities to build relationships through their work, the most important effect has been on the women receiving the scholarships.
Flora was launched in spring 2014, and in the last year it has supported 15 women to study at the University of Prishtina. They studied a range of disciplines including education, law and computer science.
For some of the Flora scholars, they are the first women in their families to get a college education.
“Until now, women weren’t getting education,” said Ahrmeti. “Men would get education and women worked at home. I’m the first in my family; my grandma got to the fourth class, my mother got to high school. She always told me, ‘You should study, you should study.’ She tried really hard.”
Ahrmeti speaks with confidence as she thinks about the future. She plans on looking for dental jobs, but if they are not available, she thinks teaching kindergarten is a perfect job.
“I’ve been working as a babysitter on the weekends,” said Ahrmeti with a smile. “I realized how much I like the kids and how much they cheer me up.”
Though Sefedini doesn’t want to work in a state school and is also not sure what she will end up doing after college, she has dreams to open a preschool or work in an orphanage.
“I would love to do mission work with children or work in orphanages,” Sefedini said. “I like to help people who are low in society and help them find dignity.”
Not only does Sefedini want to help and work with children, but she has ideas about how students now can bring about change. She gets excited talking about the untapped potential within so many people around her, and her eyes light up once more.
“Use your time to read and inform and educate yourself, because not everybody’s going to educate you, others will not necessarily give you the best lessons,” said Sefedini. “If you know how to read, then read. I do believe our culture is not a reading culture, and that adds to the ignorance. I think girls should learn for themselves. If they hear from somebody something, take time to read about it and see if it’s true.”
As these women work toward a college degrees and pursue their goals, the face of Kosovo’s future changes. Zhilivoda said one of the main goals of organizations such as Women for Women and Flora is to change the mentality of Kosovar women—to tell them that they can get education and jobs, and to give them power.
(Holly Wilkerson is a reporting intern at KosovaLive this summer in collaboration with Miami University in the United States.)
