Their own village school was destroyed in 1998 during the war. Now, Caritas-Italy has just finished building a new school, with the help of $250,000 collected from Italian dioceses.
The building, inaugurated this weekend, will offer primary education to more than 200 children. The facility will handle the needs of three villages in the area (Nec, Dushnje and Shishman), and the «new neighborhood» inhabited by those displaced from ruined mountain villages. The new building includes a library and sports facilities.
The school is multiethnic and multireligious. The majority of the students are Albanian Muslims. There are some Catholics and numerous gypsies.
Meanwhile, Caritas-Italy has inaugurated reconstructed aqueducts, which will carry potable water to 10,000 people in the mountain villages of Zym, Dedaj and Krajk, in the municipality of Prizren, inhabited largely by Muslims and a few Catholics. Even before the war, many of these houses did not have water.
Caritas-Italy has contributed to the rehabilitation of roads and of 1,130 homes in Kosovo, and of many buildings requested by parish communities and villages, including day-care centers, schools and pastoral centers.
The priority projects now include economic promotion, education for peace, and safeguarding of human rights.
