By Jessica Pearson | Intern
In a tight living room filled with family members, Kimete, 51, begins to tell us a piece of her story. After the loss of her husband Afrim, she could not provide for her three children, Fixhrije, 13, Edita, 9 and Memsur, 11. Afrim had a way of always providing for the family. Not only this but “he managed to even bring home cookies for us,” says Kimete.
“Three to four months after he died, the kids kept asking for more food,” explains Kimete, “and all I could give them were a few potatoes.” Then high blood pressure, diabetes and back pains set in. After seeing a doctor, Kimete was told that she would need to take medication...medication that she could not afford.
As a result, her son Memsur was left to pick up the broken pieces of her family. He dropped out of school and started collecting plastic trash to sell. This brought the family 13 cents per kilogram of plastic, which as one could imagine was still not enough to pay for her medicine. The girls also dropped out of school to look after their mother.
The Widows Fund responds to the need of mothers like Kimete, supporting them with food and medicine. Here through your donations, we have been able to help 49 individuals so far.
“Without the Widows Fund I would not have any food for my kids” Kimete says simply, “...or medicine for my illnesses.”
One condition of being a part of this project is that the children in the family must attend school. Rabije, our mediator’s assistant has visited the family and talked to the children about them starting the intensive classes offered by TIP to help children who have dropped out of school to catch up with their peers.
‘We are glad to have been able to help Kimete and 15 other women like her, as the impact of this project is very significant in education, especially by fighting drop-out rates of school children’ says Samir, the programme manager at TIP.
Without your care and support, women like Kimete would be left hopeless and so would their children, so thank you for giving them help right now, and hope for the future!
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