A forgotten promise - new blog: www.aforgottenpromise.blogspot.com

During my stay in Mitrovica, Kosovo, I visited on various ocasions the Roma refugee camp of Ostaroda in the northern part of the city. The conditions people are living there are infra-human and every family is affected by all kinds of the nocive effects of lead pollution, the remainings of heavy metal-mining by the ex-yugoslavian steel company Trepca. After the war between the Kosovo Liberation Army and Serbia, the Roma got between the sides. Once one of the biggest communities on the balcan peninsula, the refugees remaining in the camp are waiting for settling in new houses in the southern part of the town. Roma Mahalla, how the project is called, sounds like a forgotten promise to the suffering families living in terrible conditions...

Together with Mrs. Hilmnijeta Apuk, director of the NGO Little People of Kosovo, the support of the NGO Mitrovica Community Building and Mr. Dzafer Buzoli, Camp Officer, representing the KAAD (Kosovo Agency for Advocacy and Development), we decided to found a new initiative for fund raising. Our first step is to collect a little amount of money for the first and fundamental needs of the people in Ostaroda and to organize an exposition of portrait pictures in November 2009 in the Freie Kunstschule München for further fund raising. All the money goes directly to Little People of Kosovo and to the Camp Management, they coordinate all the necessary actions in Mitrovica, responding to the needs and most urgent problems...