By Rine Fetahu (YES 2013-2014 Kosovo, hosted by American Councils PO in Baton Rouge, LA)

Global Youth Service Day symbolizes spring, youth, community, unity, and people gathering together for a common goal. All these elements were combined on April 23rd in Prishtina for a GYSD project organized by Gentian Kuqica (YES 2015-2016 Kosovo, hosted by AFS in Ashville, OH) and a team of six alumni, which I had the luck to be a part of.

Gentian was awarded with a GYSD grant to organize a non-traditional fundraising concert in Kosova where instead of paying for an entrance ticket, participants donated food items for families in need. FoodRaising gathered alumni and youth from Kosova at the M-Club in Prishtina, who donated for families in need and had the opportunity to listen to a very well-known DJ guest at the event, Kushtrim Balaj. M-Club was filled with people and varieties of food items such as packs of flour, oil, packs of pasta, rice, sugar, salt and other items which were enough to create eight big packages to be delivered to eight families, and impact approximately forty-fifty people.

Ten alumni and non-alumni volunteers helped to carefully create these food packages contributing to the spirit of uniting for a common goal not only locally, but globally. While separating food items I recall some of the conversations we had. We all discussed how a small gesture can multiply itself to change someone else’s day or maybe their week or life. I would like to believe that is what happened on the day where I, along with Malsore Jusufi (YES 2014-2015 Kosovo, hosted by American Councils PO in Affton, MO), delivered the packages to the families in need with the help of the Red Cross. In addition to the food packages, we delivered small gestures of youth who donated and created smiles on the faces of these family members.

This GYSD Project was supported by: Termokiss, RedCross, and M-Club in Prishtina.