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Ambra and Jorida graduated from the Amaro Tan School in Pogradec in June. Although you would not guess it by looking at them, both girls come from desperately poor families. By successfully completing ninth grade, they have already attained a higher level of education than most girls from their Balkan Egyptian and Albanian communities. But they aren’t done yet. Ambra and Jorida were awarded full scholarships to the private, college preparatory Nehemia High School in Pogradec, and started tenth grade there this fall.

The theme of Amaro Tan’s 2018 summer camp was “I have rights.” This may seem like an unusual theme for a summer camp, but for the children of Amaro Tan, it is a vitally important one.

Nehemiah Gateway Albania’s Social and Medical Improvement team held their annual two-week summer camp for children with disabilities and special needs on July 2-13. The camp took place at the Nehemiah Gateway campus at Buçimas, which is enclosed for safety and has green spaces and play equipment for all ages. The 25 children who participated enjoyed outdoor play and open-air activities together every day. Thanks to generous donors like you, this camp was offered completely free of charge.

On a warm, sunny day in early June, I joined Nehemiah Gateway social workers on their twice-yearly visit to the mountain villages in the Mokra region near Pogradec, Albania. The villages seem to be close by on a map, but it takes several hours and excellent driving skills to reach these remote places. Arnold Geiger, founder of Nehemiah Gateway, first visited these villages in the 1990s, after the fall of communism. Since then, the organization has been visiting twice a year, bringing parcels of food and donated clothes and shoes to the poorest people in a very poor region. According to Albania’s 2011 census, about 46,5 % of Albanians still live in villages like these—a number that continues to shrink, as it does in many parts of the world.

In the late 1980s, Arnold Geiger started helping convoys of humanitarian relief to many countries, for example Russia, Romania and Turkey. A 1991 trip to Albania, then newly emerging from 50 years of totalitarian government, profoundly moved him.