By Dea Saraqini, YES 2014-2015, Kosovo, hosted by CCI Greenheart in Greenville, SC

In Kosovo, women generally lack support in different fields and they can be treated with disregard, but that does not mean that these attitudes won’t change; there is always room for change and it often starts with one person. There was a quote I read once, saying “don’t expect to see a change, if you don’t make one.” There are organizations in my community which work for women’s rights and advocate for women in general, but this is not enough. We cannot just wait for different organizations to do their work, we also need to do ours. This made me think about what I want to do to change my community for the better.

As a feminist, I am moved by women’s issues, especially domestic violence. In Gjakova, Kosovo, there is a shelter for female victims of domestic violence called “The Safe House.” The place itself is run by a woman and it does does a tremendous job of keeping the violence survivors and their children safe. At The Safe House, women are not only sheltered and fed, but they are also aided with their job search. For some of the women who are starting completely over, it’s hard to get a job, so they stay at the house longer. Since many women and children have lived at The Safe House, more money is needed to cover their needs.

Although Kosovo is not known for being a wealthy country, that never stops people from helping those less fortunate. Whenever it comes to donating or helping someone poor or sick, people all stand together for that person.

We, the YES alumni of Kosovo, decided to make the process of donating to The Safe House more fun by holding a bake sale in my town, Gjakova. Between February 18 and 20, we sold many different desserts, tea, and coffee at our “Sweetness for Charity” event. Initially, the alumni planned to bake the desserts, but the event got so much attention from the media that everyone who heard about it wanted to help us by baking something. It was amazing that so many people got together to collect money for The Safe House. Women were baking, youth volunteered to help sell the sweets, TV and radio stations were interested in covering the event, and our tent was also donated.

Being able to bring all these people together proved to me that our strength lies in unity. For three days I witnessed the generosity of people in my community. There were people who stopped by to ask if we needed help, some who didn’t buy anything just donated money, and some just wanted to congratulate us on our initiative.

In particular, there is one case that I remember well. One of the alumni, Mjellma Vula (YES '13), who was one of the key organizers of the project, was hanging out with her friends at a café when a man who recognized her from our TV appearance to promote “Sweetness for Charity” came over. He told her that he really liked our initiative and he wanted to donate as well. At first, Mjellma thought that he would come to buy some desserts, but he said that all he simply wanted to make a donation of $40. This showed us how generous someone can be for a good cause. All of this filled me and everyone involved with positive thoughts that our community is changing for good.

After three days of hard work involving the whole community, we managed to collect €398,40 (or $438.22). This money was directly given to the head of The Safe House, who decided to put the money in the bank for The Safe House to use for their future needs. Ultimately, collecting this amount of money wasn’t our proudest accomplishment. What we are the proudest of is that we managed to bring awareness to women’s issues in our society. “Sweetness for Charity” showed us that when we all get together, we can do something great, but it all has to start somewhere, maybe with just one person.