The right to participate in decision-making processes by Njomza

I’m Njomza. I'm 15 years old and I'm from Gjakova.

Njomza Bytyqi

I've heard from many friends about the YMCA and they suggest me to be part of the YMCA. I participated in the ‘’mYcommunity’’ program where we discussed Democracy, Prejudice, Volunteering, Stereotypes and many other topics. During this time in this program, the topic which I have liked the most was about Prejudice and Stereotypes. In my opinion, prejudices are unnecessary. In everyday life, we should not use them because we must love everyone as they are without changing anything to them because we do not like them.

Njomza while reading for her group

We, the whole group, have participated in the assembly meeting of the Municipality of Gjakova, which was held together with the Mayor and the citizens. There we learned that we as citizens have the right to participate in decision-making processes, to complain about issues that concern us, such as hospitals, parking lots, traffic lights, taxation, etc. So there were many different types of complaints and comments. The meeting for me is one of the most interesting and memorable experiences because I had the chance to learn how I can become an active citizen.

The challenge that we decided as a group to accomplish was for ‘’Violence against Children’’ we divided the tasks into equal parts, as I liked the art and writing I helped design for flyers and text writing. During this time I became more associated with the group and learned how to work in a group.

Njomza with her group before the challenge leaflets were distributed

After completing the first level training I realized that I had begun to understand more about humanity. The best memory at the YMCA was the movie ‘’Pay it forward’’ which had a wonderful meaning.

 I would like every young person to attend the YMCA because it is an organization that offers many good things that we as a youth cannot talk about at school or at home.


*The "mY community" project implemented by GWY is implemented under the GrassRoots Action Support project implemented by the Iniciativa Kosovare per Stabilitet - IKS, #Lens and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Prishtina Office, funded by the European Union and managed by the European Union Kosovo