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The campaigners have distributed hundreds of clothes among the needy and disadvantaged. |
PRISTINA — Hundreds of Kosovans have thronged the Koha charity in Pristina to donate old and new clothes for the poor and orphans during `Eid Al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
"The benevolence demonstrated a deep-seated fraternity and solidarity in Kosovo," Naim Brisha, the spokesman for Koha, told IslamOnline.net.
The Koha campaign, titled "Your Old Clothes Make the Other Happy," is the brainchild of young Kosovans at the grand mosque in Brittani.
"They felt for their disadvantaged peers and established Koha last Ramadan to cater for the needy," said Brisha.
He said the charity has so far collected thousands of new and used clothes from Pristina residents
"We have distributed clothes among 120 destitute families in Pristina to bring a smile to their faces in `Eid," which started in Kosovo on Saturday, October 13, added Brisha.
It is the tradition in `Eid Al-Fitr, one of the two major festivities in the Islamic calendar, that Muslims wear new clothes.
The feast is also marked by kahk (sugary cookies), a meal of fish and ediyah or pocket money for children amid celebrations galore.
Deplorable
Brisha said the deplorable living conditions in Kosovo and towering poverty rates were the main motivator of the campaign.
"Living conditions have deteriorated steeply and we decided not to sit on the fence," he said.
Brisha said the horrible daily sight of Kosovans around garbage containers to pick up used food cans or empty bottles to re-sell them at a meager price to make a living is breaking the heart.
The Muslim activist says that campaign also raised food stuffs from the disadvantaged to help them meet their needs during `Eid.
"We also present children with toys and sweet," he added.
The World Bank estimated that 37 percent of Kosovans are living below the poverty line, basically due to political instability.
Muslim-majority Kosovo, which has been administered by the UN since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign halted civilian killings and ethnic cleansing by Serbian troops, is still technically a Serbian province.
Its status is one of the last disputes remaining from the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the creation of a number of new independent states in the Balkans.
Kosovo's 90-percent ethnic Albanian majority wants to break away from Serbia, which offered them autonomy.
A UN proposal to provide the province an internationally supervised independence was blocked in the UN Security Council by Russia amid fierce opposition from Serbia.
Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said Sunday, October 14, ahead of talks on the UN-administered province that Kosovo will never be an independent state, no matter of what kind of pressure Serbia is exposed to.
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