Ensuring that when a father dies, his children's chance of education don't die with him. When a father of young children dies, it's always a tragedy. When the family was already living right on the economic edge and they are left without food in the cupboard, without savings and now without available manpower to earn, his children are forced out of school to earn for their families. This fund offers support to widows in the poorest community in Kosovo supporting kids to stay in school.
In neighbourhoods 28 and 29 of Fushe Kosove almost every family survives on waste-picking. Men are the most active in this job, though children - who can shinny into skips and reach garbage that others miss - can earn as much as their fathers. When a man dies, there is huge economic pressure on his children to leave school in order to make up for his lost income. If all the children are of school age, their widowed mother has too many childcare responsibilities to earn money herself.
Prioritising children's schooling as the only way for a family to work their way out of poverty in the long term, we offer small grants to widows whose children are all of school age for the one-off financial support they need in order to keep their family together and keep their children in school. The average grant will be 13 euro per month, and the grants will be administered by a respected member of the community who knows families' situation to identify where the greatest need is.
In the long-term, a child who has completed their education is able to support themselves, their family and their community. This is only possible if we avert the short-term crisis precipitated by the untimely death of the breadwinner in a child's family. [Photo credit: Arber Jashari]
This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).
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