"We must be willing to work with one another, especially to educate children..."

It has been almost a year since Irfan Mustafa – Fani is part of the nonformal education training from PLAY international. Fani is a very motivated 19 years old boy from a small village called Plemetina in Obiliq. He has finished Medicine High School and he is currently doing an internship at a local hospital. He is waiting to be certified to be a nurse and one day he aims to be a doctor.

Fani is motivated to participate in PLAY activities to help other vulnerable people, especially children from his community. He expresses a great motivation to change the mindset of children in the Roma community especially in the regard of school dropout.

“I hope one day my community, Roma community, grows out of this situation of financial instability and lack of education. For this, we must be willing to work with one another, especially to educate children.”

Another thing that bothers Irfan, is the situation of young women within the Roma community. He expresses that he feels resentful that girls in his community are educated to marry and make children as soon as possible and once that happens, they are more prone to leave school. He regards this as very unfair because everyone should have an education and finish school for the overall prosperity of the community and especially women should have the right of choice when to get married.

Except for the situation within the community, Irfan states that he believes that the way the Roma community is perceived by most people in Kosovo should change as well. He mentions that he feels privileged to come from an educated family, but this did not protect him from being a victim of discrimination in his school, sometimes even from his teachers.  

“This is quite unfair and frustrating when the people who are supposed to provide you with knowledge, make you feel uncomfortable for your own identity.”

Irfan has an exceptional motivation within himself, he shares that he taught a fellow friend from his community to read, by teaching him daily a few words.

When it comes to his time in the PLAY training, he says that he likes the fact that the games are explained very good, and they change progressively each time he participates.

“When I go back to my village, I play with the children of my community everything I played here, and frankly, I am always very excited to show them the games.”

He expresses that his favorite thing about PLAY games and sports activities is that everyone plays together, and during the game, everyone realizes that we must work together in no matter what, to reach victory. This, according to Irfan is a life lesson.

“For me PLAY international means playing with everyone equally.”