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Wild Zones: Nurturing a generation of youth in Kosovo who love the earth and love their own lives

MAK is delighted that Karen Payne and David Hawkins, co-founders of Wild Zone, will work with the community on the Manchester Peace Park this summer.

 

Karen and David work internationally introducing innovative family focussed play projects connecting young people to each other and the earth through the joy of unstructured play. Wild Zone will travel to Kosovo to work with MAK in August.

 

To learn more or support this project please click

here

 
 

 

 

 

Support received for MAK's educational work in Kosovo
MAK is extremely grateful for financial support for its educational work in Kosovo from the Allan and Nesta Ferguson Charitable Trust and Unite.
This will enable MAK volunteers to develop our work in schools in Podujeve and to improve opportunities through the provision of resources, teaching local teachers, and running special programmes for young people. 
A MAK team of 11 volunteers is currently working in Kosovar schools setting up 5 IT suites with donated computers, printers and servers and MAK has also started to equip Handikos with adapted computer facilites.
Further donations enabling MAK to extend our educational work further will be most gratefully received.
Another GREAT Manchester Run

25 MAK runners, a MAK water distribution team, and a host of MAK friends, Manchester's finest cutting edge musicians, participated in Sunday's 10K Bupa Great Manchester Run.

For our 7th year running in this massive city centre event, MAK was invited to programme its own stage in Spinningfields. 5 hours of eclectic Manchester music was provided between the morning 10K run and the late afternoon sprint by The Travelling Band, Hannah Atkins, The Ambersons, Jo Rose, Rook and the Ravens and Dave Rofe.

It was a great day for athletics with the finest distance runner ever, Haile Gebreselassie, holder of 26 world records, taking all the accolades again as he stormed in before 33,000 runners.

Special thanks to race director Charlie Mussett and Nova International (who work with MAK in Kosovo), to all MAK runners, sponsors, the MAK water team (18,000 bottles!), and all our musicians. Compliments go the  Travelling Band, for providing such a great stage.

The annual Bupa Great Run is a major source of income for MAK's work in Kosovo. The MAK Running team can be sponsored via www.justgiving.com/mak giving the reference RUN. To resister to run for MAK in 2011 please contact us.

Computers for Kosovo

Response from donors in the UK to MAK's computer appeal to support IT in Kosovo schools has been highly successful. 

 

This month a MAK team of 4, led by project leader Oxford post-graduate research student Mireille Gomes, travelled to Kosovo to plan the arrival and use of all the donations in both primany and secondary schools.

 

Several suites will be installed ready for use by thousands of pupils at the beginning of the next school term.

 

MAK wishes to thank all sponsors and donors for their kind support. We are appealing for 5 more laptops for Handikos. If you can help please contact MAK. Donations can also be made to www.justgiving.com/kosovoIT .

 

HM Queen Elizabeth II welcomes the second anniversary of Kosovo's Independence

The Queen sends greetings to Kosovo

On the occasion of the Republic of Kosovo's Independence Day, the Queen has sent the following message to President Fatmir Sejdiu:

Go to fullsize image

As you celebrate your National Day, I have much pleasure in sending my warmest greetings to Your Excellency and the people of the Republic of Kosovo, together with my best wishes for a peaceful and prosperous future.

Elizabeth R.

Go to fullsize image

Congratulating all Kosovo’s people on the country’s second anniversary,  Her Majesty’s Ambassador in Kosovo, Andy Sparkes CMG, stated:

“In the year ahead, I hope that the Kosovo authorities and we, the international community, can work closely to achieve real progress and improved quality of life for  all Kosovo’s communities, building on peace to create prosperity.  

The ambition of Kosovo is shared with its neighbours in the Western Balkans - a common European future. The UK is committed to working with all in the region in pursuit of this goal”.

16 February 2010  

FCO link
 

Ready for Spring - Bird Boxes installed on the Peace Park

We have received some fantastic news about our Bird Box Project.

The brief and money was sent out to Kosovo in December and we have just heard that all of the various bird houses and nest boxes have been built and that the first 5 (of 20) have already been installed on the park and in the woods. The next 15 are going to be installed very soon.

Check out the Bird Boxes Project page for the latest photos.

Osterode crisis continues as children’s lead levels soar

Today Brian Flynn reports the following in the Sun Newspaper:

- Youngsters are being poisoned by dust blowing into a stinking refugee camp from a mountain of toxic lead waste towering above them They were packed into the contaminated site by the UN ten years ago after British soldiers went in with our allies to rescue Kosovo from Serbian tyrant Slobodan Milosevic.

Their families, burned from their own homes by ethnic cleansing as the conflict ended, were assured it would be for just a few months until a safer place could be found.

But the UN High Commission For Refugees and sister agency UNMIK - the UN Mission in Kosovo - abandoned them behind the barbed wire of the filthy Osterode camp in Mitrovica when they pulled out two years ago and left the Kosovo government with the problem.

Around 400 of the 650 refugees at Osterode are youngsters, with more than 200 under the age of ten.

After a decade in the hellhole, tests show the children now have so much lead in their blood that medical equipment cannot accurately measure it.

The World Health Organisation and humanitarian campaigners say only immediate evacuation and medical treatment will save the children.

Yet the UN and its agencies STILL refuse to act.

Last night British scientists and humanitarian campaigners called on Foreign Secretary David Miliband to intervene.

Leading toxicologist Professor Alastair Hay, a UK Government adviser, said: "I have never encountered a situation in all the years I have been looking at lead where the situation is so catastrophic as it is for these children. "I think this is absolutely criminal. It is such a disgrace that these children are exposed."

So far, at least 84 refugees have died in the camp - many of them children whose organs simply packed up. -

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/2771943/Un-left-hundreds-of-Kosovo-kids-to-die-of-lead-poisoning.html#ixzz0ZltTpWUz

 

At risk ... camp kids with a bleak future

Please don't forget the innocent children of Oserode this Christmas.

For more information visit:

KMEG / STPI
Kosovo Medical Emergency Group
Society for Threatened Peoples International

www.toxicwastekills.com

WILDWORKS in Kosovo

WILDWORKS, a leading international company based in Cornwall, UK, supports MAK's aim to celebrate culture and community in Kosovo. WILDWORKS works through drama. The company flies out today to research a possible creation of an Albanian production of 'Souterrain' with MAK.

Based on the Orpheus myth, the promenade performance may take place on the Manchester Peace Park in Podujevo.

WILDWORKS produces unique landscape theatre in challenging places and with extraordinary communities. Productions have been sited in old quarries, derelict mines, working fishing quays, abandoned department stores, a Napoleonic citadel, the Green Line in Nicosia, a naval base… The company has worked with gospel choirs, drama groups, local artists, surfers, tea dance regulars, North African migrants, cake-makers, ex-miners, a young hip-hop group, abseilers and a Hell's Angels chapter.

Distinctively Cornish, WILDWORKS draws on a wider and older European tradition. At the same time it has elements in common with the best new work produced through the networks of Creation Centres and Festivals in Europe. Drawing its power from community, it integrates music, dance and theatre. WILDWORKS uses everything: food, stunning imagery, action, film, music and text to tell a story. Narrative is at the centre of its work. WILDWORKS brings the seeds of a story to a site and weaves in the strands that tie people and place together.

As a company WILDWORKS is drawn to stories that are both epic and intimate, human stories that can touch and resonate with audiences across barriers of language, age and nationality. The strength of the work lies in the fusion of a strong sense of place, the power of people and the most distinct theatrical imagination. Audiences all over Europe have responded with delight and awe to productions.

MAK is delighted by this development which has been planned by MAK representative in Kosovo, Fazli Blakçori. We wish director Bill Mitchell and the company a most successful research visit.

 

Podujevo Businesses Sponsor Great Peace Park Run 2009 in Kosovo

Falenderojmë sponsorët te cilen mbështetën Vrapimin në Parkun e Paqes 2009.

 

We would like to say a huge thank you to the four sponsors who committed to helping Llapi Athletics and MAK make the Great Peace Park Run 2009 a big success.

MAK has always supported businesses in Podujevo and we thank these businesses for financially supporting this community event. This sponsorship is crucial in evolving the Great Peace Park Run into a regular, fully sustainable event and raising much needed funds to continue to develop the Manchester Peace Park.

 

Watch this space for pictures of this year's run.

President of Kosovo is welcomed to London and Oxford
04 Nov 2009
Minister for Europe Chris Bryant welcomed the President of Kosovo Dr Fatmir Sejdiu to London.
 
President of Kosovo, Crown Copyright

President Sejdiu was was received by the British government on November 4th.  The Foreign and Commonwealth Office reports that Chris Bryant was delighted to welcome Kosovo's President Dr Fatmir Sejdiu to London.

In their meeting, Mr Bryant congratulated President Sejdiu on the successful completion of the border demarcation between Kosovo and Macedonia.

He stressed the UK's desire to see free and fair local elections in Kosovo on 15 November, with participation from all Kosovo's communities. 

They also discussed the European Commission's Progress Report and Study on Kosovo and Chris Bryant gave his firm support for Kosovo’s European ambitions. (source FCO)

President Sejdiu was also invited to speak at Oxford University. MAK member, post-graduate student Mireille Gomes queued to hear him speak at Oxford Students Union.

Mireille writes,

'President Sejdiu is an eloquent speaker who comes across as someone with high ideals, wanting the best for all Kosovars, Serb minority included.

I asked him what measures were being put in place to deal with the corruption within all levels of government. He said that everyone was being held accountable by the rules, no matter their societal stature. He hoped that Kosovars would vote for candidates who upheld the ideals.'

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 last update on: 04/09/2010 01:02:12
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© 2009
MAK is a registered charity in England and Wales (Registered Charity No.1087178)
MAK is the working name of Manchester Aid to Kosovo (also known as MaK)