A few months after the training in Ulcinj (18 – 28 October 2013), members of the CNA team received a letter from a participant, a Serb from Gračanica, Kosovo, who had at the time been actively seeking employment, mostly in Serbia.
With her consent, we are publishing her letter in full:
Dear Dada and Katarina,
Because of your support and encouragement to go for the job interview in the middle of the training, I feel I must share this with you personally, if only in this message. Great news, I GOT A JOB – I will be working as a Kids for Peace Coordinator in an organisation in Priština. I officially signed the contract today, and I guess I just wanted to boast a bit.
I also have to go back to the training. One of the final topics, workshops, exercises, whatever, was for us to imagine everything was fine in our town, country, and to write what we would be doing then. Huh! I had a hard time writing anything then, because it seemed impossible to me, so I kept writing something and then throwing the notes away. Whatever I wrote seemed unrealistic to me at that moment, and I had a hard time dispelling my own attitude. I can never forget Katarina’s sentence, when she was introducing this exercise (I’m paraphrasing): “I meet Olgica for coffee in Priština where she works…” Believe me, it all seemed to so far away and unreachable for me back then. And look at me now.
Of course, the fact that I got a job does not mean everything is peachy here, but it does mean there is hope, when you fight for your rights, and when you fight for your life without encroaching on anyone else around you. The training inspired me to seek employment in Kosovo. To find some answers and free myself of restraint and fear. I will be working with Serbian and Albanian children who have me the vote to be a committee member.
It would have been a real pleasure to share this with you over coffee in Priština, but I hope there’ll be a chance for that, too!
My warmest regards and wishing you success in your future work!
All my best for the whole team,
Olgica
28 january 2014
