"Albanian children," says Monica O'Hagan, Irish co-ordinator of the Albanian schools twinning project, "often go to school barefooted and hungry. The schools are dilapidated, with bare and crumbling walls, windows without glass, unusable or non-existent toilets. Children sit three or four to a rickety old desk, the younger ones squashed between the old ones, for heat in the winter. Some sit on large stones or on the dirt floor. Equipment simply isn't available. Even basics such as notebooks and pencils are a luxury. Textbooks are a rarity."
Decades of isolationist policies under the communist regime of Enver Hoxha have resulted in a huge cultural and economic gap between Albania and the rest of Europe. Even still most Albanians need a map to locate the rest of us.
Albania is the poorest country in Europe. A third of its population is of school-going age. Education must be the foundation stone of future prosperity, but during the overthrow of the old regime over half the existing schools were either badly damaged or burned down.
The EU is encouraging and assisting participation in a programme aimed at helping the schools materially and culturally. They desperately need notebooks, pencils, envelopes, dictionaries and magazines of any sort as well as financial assistance. However, Albania is riddled at every level with corruption and it is proving difficult to get help through.
"Communication is a major problem,["] Elva Nic Phaidin explains. Along with her third class in Gaelscoil Inchicore, Dublin, she has been writing to Albanian children and their teacher in the Kruje district, a relatively wealthy area which has been assigned to Ireland.
"It seems that parcels and letters are rifled and anything of value stolen. We're having to rethink how we will send future supplies. At the moment I have money raised by the children here but I'm not sending it until I'm absolutely sure it will reach its destination. Perhaps couriers are the answer. It's pitiful though, as anything that has got through has been hugely appreciated.
"I sent a plastic counting strip to the teacher and she replied that she had never seen such a thing. It was so wonderful that she decided to keep it for her son."
However bad the plight of the average Albanian child, that of the mentally and physically handicapped child is even worse. Back in 1994, Frank Hyland saw a BBC documentary about an Albanian home for mentally handicapped children. "My own son, Francis, is mentally handicapped," says Hyland, from Artane, Dublin. "I tried to imagine him there among those children, naked, skin and bone, cold, eating excrement. I had to do something, even though I didn't even know where Albania was."
Since then he has been to Albania seven times. "The first time I didn't know anyone. I just started knocking on doors. Then I met a couple, Bob and Sheila Lovatt from the British organisation, Mencap. Together we tracked down 17 of the 22 children we had seen in the documentary. Today they are in a warm, safe home."
During the Communist regime the birth of a handicapped child was simply not registered. Typically the parents handed such children over to the state, which in turn handed them over to underpaid and often unsuitable care workers in provincial centres. The children lived in truly appalling conditions.
Frank Hyland is raising funds to build a day care centre, including a school room, for mentally handicapped children in the town of Fier, about 40 miles from Tirana, the capital. He now has an extensive range of contacts in Albania and a parents association has been set up.
To date the Eagle Trust (the eagle is Albania's national symbol) has sent two container loads of supplies and an ambulance cum mini-bus filled with £10,000 worth of medicines from Ireland. Lindita, a teacher, and Agim, a social worker, have been to Ireland to spend six weeks training in St Raphael's, a residential and day care centre in Celbridge, Co Kildare, run by the St John of God order.
"It's an uphill battle, but I'm not giving up," says Hyland. "The project is beset with problems, not least bribery and corruption. Even in the parents association, I discovered one parent was selling supplies on the black market. But finally we have a site for the centre. Hopefully, we will start to build later this year, if the political situation allows and fund-raising has been completed."
Contact: Monica O'Hagan is available at moh@tinet.ie
