Working with the community matters!

Last week with the colleagues from the Embassy we spent our day with the children from the day care centre for children with special needs “Dzunica” in Prilep. What a fulfilling and wonderful day! Why – you may ask?

We all have our professional, personal and societal goals we want to achieve, and we all know that to be successful you need to focus and prioritise. While often being overwhelmed with balancing these goals, perhaps we need sometimes to stop and think. What if we do something different and new, and we provide support to someone we do not know? If we get out of our everyday work and offer our time and energy for something new?

The Embassy team works to support reforms in Macedonia, to enhance economic and other cooperation between UK and Macedonia. Our goals and responsibility as citizens are to engage for fair society that provides equal opportunities for all. We believe we share the goal with all parents and well-meaning people to make children happy and able to achieve their fullest potential.Last week in Prilep we felt we got closer to achieving that.

But, to start from the beginning.

Comfy Angel (CA) is a British-Macedonian joint venture company producing pillows, duvets and bedding for 10 years, employing more than 900 people. They marked their tenth anniversary with opening another new factory, clearly a big business success, but what impressed us about Comfy Angel is the way they celebrated their success. Working in partnership with several institutions and organisations in Prilep, the municipality, Red Cross of Macedonia, local library and elderly care home, they donated their products to all kindergartens and children clinics in Macedonia; donated and read books to elderly people living in care homes and organised bazaar for homemade food prepared by all CA employees and invested the collected funds in the municipality. This is a fantastic example of corporate social responsibility.

When they approached us to do something together, we were already planning our “away day” – a day that we devote to our team building and our joint contributions to our business objectives. As many would agree, the best way to build a team is to join efforts in a common goal. Working at the day care centre Dzunica came as a natural choice – embracing diversity and promoting human rights is one of our professional goals and personal interest to all of us. Therefore, we were not surprised that an idea to work with Comfy Angels at the daily centre Dzunica resonated so well among my colleagues.

The Manager of the Centre explained the purpose and the work of the centre, about the children and their needs. There are 20 people at the centre, half of them younger than 18 years of age. They are all people with cognitive disabilities e.g. Down syndrome, autism or other learning and cognitive challenges. The building of the centre has been provided by the municipality and equipped with assistance from EU and UNICEF. Maintenance is however a challenge. Jointly with Comfy Angel we provided some modest assistance in painting the fence and the playground, minor repairs on the building and providing gardening tools and assistance in planting the garden they maintain. But most importantly we joined hands with the children and CA employees – many of them experienced craftsmen, to make this place where these children spend their time a nicer and more pleasant home away from their homes. The refurbished fence and playground, the planted trees and the clean garden, our mutual effort with the children, looked excellent at the end of the day. And the feeling of accomplishment among all of us was even better.

The highlight of the day was the birthday party we organised for little Darko. We were blessed to share the enormous joy and happiness of the children with a dance and songs. The star of the podium was Daniel, a young boy with Down syndrome with great talent for gardening and dancing! We went home tired and happy, grateful for the experience.

There is one message we would like to pick up from this blog – no one should feel sorry for people with special needs! They are equal part of our society and we should not wait for someone to include them. It is our personal responsibility to make sure that we spend time together and share our lives. That will help them, but it will certainly also make us more human. We are all different, and that is the best about us.

Joana Babusku, EU & Economic Officer
Irena Stevcevska, Head of Programmes
British Embassy Skopje