Lets Get Started Network

The experience in “Let’s get started” summer school enhanced the confine of our imagination on the variety of cultural and sports activities that we could organize in our community. Seeing other people organizing activities seemed very easy and simple, but when we took the step to do something on our own responsibility, we realized that a project could be at the same time amazing and difficult. The key to overpass every obstacle was team-working and our great desire to see our work done properly.
Permet is a small town and youth’s possibilities are very limited and in order to bring something new (where everyone could participate and moreover enjoy their activity) we thought of organizing a sports in-door stadium.

So there comes the idea of managing the mini-football championship between the classes of the school. There we could present our perspectives and aims for this year and get more active people in our club .It was surprising that in an afternoon’s hour, all the attention of the community was directed to our activity, and moreover the participant where having fun. This made us proud, because just a group of teenager could bring so many meaningful changes and we had contributed in the development of the mentality against the potential of youth leadership skills. Fortunately the outcome of this activity was not just in the moral ground but also in the material one because we managed to gain money from the tickets, we sold in the mini-football championship.

Our primal goal was to hold a cultural manifestation where we wanted to present the traditional values and talents of our city. The championship was the basis to achieve our target of the future, because we got the financial support we needed and moreover we got the credibility of people toward our activities. And after two months of working hard as a team, finally we were just one step away of realizing our project. Finally our oeuvre was going to see the light of sun and many people were enthusiastic because less or more everyone in our club had supported this initiative. And the big day came…
In the morning we organized visits in cultural places that represented our history, so we could get deeply involved in what we called:” Permet, a pearl yet to be discovered”. The stone and his legend of braids and the special church of Saint Mary in Leusa were the two most amazing stops during our” navigation” in the “sea” of Permet’s history.
The frescos and the icons of church of “Leusa” were so divine that people thought they were in a real arts’ gallery. The mastery of woodcarvings in all the spaces of the church‘s iconostasis, the hue and the light of frescos gave the feeling of proud … but who were those masters that had worked with such a mastery, passion and love?!!
This was the question that we wanted to give an answer…. So we decided to organize an exhibition in traditional local of our city. There we could enjoy the greenness of the parks accompanied by the gurgle of “Vjosa” river.
We gathered the masters of producing jam, wine; we found girls and women that work in hook, the one that could saw and we thought of creating a special pavilion of the fair. But this was so little to present the immense tradition that we have… so we managed to borrow a lot of beautiful folk costumes’ photos of our region. Among them there was a portrait of the great master of folk songs: Laver Bariu with clarinet.
Eheh folk music, a cherish on the cake which could not be cast out of our program Aurel Nurka and Florian Dauti prepared folk songs verifying, that youth could sing beautifully the folk song of their birthplace.
Our country has contributed from his whirlpool with a lot of popular people in all fields. A special place was reserved for them. We collected from the library of school and town, books of Naim Frasheri, Nonda Bulka, Bardhyl Londo, Stilian Adhamit, Vaso Toles, and Sinan Vakes etc and with their contribution to the Albanian literature we made another bill-board in the fair. Amazing eee so many popular figures just from one small town… but our heart is so big and these ambassadors of our cities represent perfectly the talent of Permet’s people. Maybe they are part of Albania heritage and recognized all over our country but we also displayed different posters, folders from festivals that are organized in our city during summer to represent the talents that maybe are part just of our admiring…
These were the main objects presented in the fair and in the festival that we organized. We created a wonderful collage where the past and the present stood closely to each-other. After that we organized a party and at last we went in-door stadium to follow the final match of mini-football championship….
Was it successful……? I would like you to answer this question…
Our friends, parents, teachers were present and amazed by our potential to show the love toward our city culture. What was surprising was that: you know that the mayor or other people will influence always says yes just to get rid of you…but in this case he said because he was going to come…Only him, no… all the most powerful representative were there and valued our work with these words
You see the sunlight in the morning and I think that this sun is going to shine for us in the future. We had arrived to organize an activity really special and unique in its kind and really throwing away the modesty, we succeed and we are happy that people though in such superlative thinking. We got their greetings, applauses and their promises in helping in other projects but moreover their heart…
I would like to end with another quotation on the evaluation: “When the initiative is made to encourage values, this is a value itself.

Edjola Merkuri
Coordinator of LGS Permeti Club