My Story

Hello! My name is Enxhi Balliu. I am an 11 years old girl and my birthday is on Aprill 11^th. I am doing well and enjoy good health. My favorite color is blue and my future dream is to be a surgeon doctor. I attend the third grade at school and enjoy learning. My favorite subject that I like to study the most is Language. Because of the pandemic, we are respecting the distancing and keep masks. We are happy that during this month the cases have been reduced and many people are being vaccinated.  Right after school, I get together with my friends and we like to spend a while to play outside. There is a game here that we call the building a house game. We have also another game that we play when I gather a group of children and they pretend to be the pupils and I pretend to be their teacher.  When I am in my house, I like to help my mother and do the dishes for her after we have our meals. I help her with all that I can offer.

In my family I have my father, Zamir, my mother Arta and a sister whose name is Ami. She is at present 8 years old and frequents the third grade at school. Ami and I got both registered in the sponsorship programme of Adopt a Child. My father is working in construction. He is not hired, but he is working there in black, receiving no insurance. This means he doesn’t have a full time job and earns not enough to cover all the needs of our family. My mother has a job and she works in a company, cleaning fish and other sea products that are used for sell in the shops or restaurants. She receives every month a small amount which is a blessing to us. My mother is coming together with us while we are frequenting the programme of Adopt a Child. She comes to the church services as well as to the other activities that the church organizes during the week.

Elbasan is an important industrial centre. Elbasan is the centre of production of steel for construction. Elbasan has also a factory that produces cement, another one producing ferrochrome, oxygen, and a factory producing mobiles for homes out of wood. Many factories that produce alcoholic drinks opened during the time of King Zog and they continued their activities during the communism time. The town of Elbasan gained a lot of importance from the time that the Chinese built the big manufacture of the iron and nickel minerals to get refined in order to gain strong steel for construction. This factory was built on 1974. Around it many other sub factories were built and as a result of these factories the air contains pollution and it is not healthy. Many people who live there suffer from the air being polluted and this is a constant issue they deal with even today. Elbasan has 7800 businesses registered, Elbasan as a town has about 65% of the whole businesses but the majority of these businesses have only hired one person and the unemployment is very high. The majority of the people in the town work in black being hired from these businesses and earn for the living. In this town the most important businesses that are running are the ones dealing with marketing, transportation and others such as hotels and restaurants or bars. Only 20% of the population deals with agriculture. The people who live in the town work in the industrial factories that are running but they earn too less for the living and unable to provide all that is needed to keep their families provided. The salaries are way too low.

The schedule of our weekly meetings at our new church and Adopt a Child program in Elbasan is as follows: On Sundays, church service and children’s Sunday school at 10:30 AM. On Mondays, the youth meeting at 6:00 PM and on Wednesdays, 6:00 PM prayer meetings and Bible study meeting.

Translated by Martin Rucolli

Adopt a Child Albania