MaximsNewsNetwork: KOSOVO SCHOOLS: POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION: WORLD BANK

MaximsNewsNetwork: 28 October 2009 - World Bank: Kosovo, a country still recovering from civil conflict, is busy improving its schools with grants from the World Bank. The money is being used to buy essential teaching tools with local communities deciding themselves what improvements are most needed.
Kosovo is busy improving its schools with grants from the World Bank. The money is being used to buy essential teaching tools with local communities deciding what improvements are needed
At Sadri Duhla Middle School in rural Kosovo, ninth grade biology students are learning about the human digestive system.
SOUNDBITE (Albanian) Granit Rrafshi, Student:
In the books we see only photographs of the body parts, but here we see them in real life.
SOUNDBITE (Albanian) Ermira Suka, Student:
The equipment helps, although it is only a small amount, it helps us learn through seeing.
Kosovo has made use of the World Banks Education Participation Improvement Project to assist the purchase of new teaching equipment. It has awarded grants to more than 500 schools in Kosovo, still recovering from the civil conflict that followed the disintegration of former Yugoslavia.
SOUNDBITE (Albanian) Raxhep Suka, Biology Teacher:
When you teach biology and chemistry without equipment, the class is very dry and incomprehensible for the students. This equipment helps us clarify, it gives us the tools.
As part of the grants capacity- building mission, decisions on what the schools are most in need of are up to the local communities who are also asked to contribute financially.
Sadri Duhlas Principal, Hamdi Rrafshi, says that in addition to the biology equipment, students, parents and other community members decided to spend the rest of the grant money on a copying machine, large maps and a sound board for school events outdoors:
SOUNDBITE (Albanian) Hamdi Rrafshi, School Principal:
Parents were so satisfied and after realizing how beneficial all the equipment was, they decided to contribute by paying for the construction of cabinets in the school.
These students are learning to be dental technicians, at Luciano Motroni Medical High School in the southern Kosovo city of Prizren.
(SOUNDBITE (Albanian) Salajdin Gashi, Student:
It was different last year we had to learn in private labs and in the professors clinics.
The school used a project grant to purchase the equipment the students are practicing on. Salajdin Gashi is in his final year here.
SOUNDBITE (Albanian) Rishan Kransniqi , Dentistry Teacher:
Before, the students were sent to private clinics, including mine, but it was difficult because there was a large number of students and not enough equipment. Also, since the equipment was not theirs, they were not as free to use it.

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• Kosovo
• post-conflict reconstruction
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