Campaign Story

The Resource Centre for teaching and services for students with visual impairments ‘“Xheladin Deda”’ in Peja is the only centre in Kosovo that provides education for blind students and students with visual impairments. The school was founded in 1982 as a special school for the blind and visually impaired students, initially as a closed institution – a special school, but now this institution works as a resource centre. The Resource Centre in Peja is the only school for blind students in Kosovo, and provides: services for regular schools in which students with visual impairments have been integrated, training for teachers and parents, family consulting, treatment of children in pre-primary education, support through tiflo-technological and tiflo-didactic tools, etc.

Around 40 students are involved in the learning process of in different grades of primary and secondary education. These students are taught by around 40 qualified educational professionals. The school also has a dormitory in which around 30 students, from all municipalities of Kosovo including minorities, have been accommodated.

Through the help of donors and the engagement of the school staff, laboratories have been established for a large number of subjects e.g. the lab of art, music, as well as laboratories of different subjects in which students learn and develop their skills. The school also has a library including hundreds of print books as well as 200 acoustic books. The school also includes an acoustic studio in which current students and graduates of the Centre prepare instructional material in the form of acoustic books.

Nevertheless, regardless of the considerable number of books, students with visual impairments still remain limited in terms of the variety of instructional material they are exposed to. Therefore, a professional printer in braille, which represents a permanent need of this centre would enable the school to provide students with different materials in braille in accordance with their needs, and this way would enhance the academic journey of these students and lessen the barriers of their inclusion in higher education across Kosovo.

The price of these printers hovers around 5,000 EUR which is too big a sum of money and is unaffordable by the school and the families of students with visual impairments, therefore we invite you to join us in this campaign to buy these students a braille printer and simultaneously return their hopes for an inclusive education in Kosovo!

Thus, within the platform Kosovo We Want’ initiated by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation, the group ‘Education We Want’ in cooperation with Riinvest College are organizing this campaign to raise funds for the purchase of a braille printer for students with visual impairments at the Resource Centre ‘Xheladin Deda’ in Peja, students integrated in regular schools, as well as students with visual impairments enrolled in higher education programmes across Kosovo. 

Friedrich Ebert Stiftung website: http://www.fes-prishtina.org/wb/pages/english/fes-in-prishtina.php

Riinvest website: https://www.riinvest.net/

Project Budget