Young women – Voices from Kosovo

By Alexandra von Vultejus

 

 

In addition to the official programme during our stay in Kosovo, my project group wanted to focus on young women specifically, and conducted interviews in Prishtina and Mitrovica with girls and young women that we encountered on the streets or during the scheduled meetings of the day. 

 

Our project took the form of a booklet with the aesthetics of a magazine. It shares the voices we listened to in the form of condensed stories. We wanted to understand the realities and lived experiences of young women in Kosovo and amplify their voices – not speak on their behalf.

 

My personal motivation for this project was mostly to get to know young people from Kosovo – as simple as it sounds. I am very talkative and I love to make new friends. This project enabled me even more to approach strangers and have conversations. I experienced that young Kosovars were usually just as eager to get to know us as the other way around! There is so much that we have in common. The borders between interviews and intimate conversations blurred occasionally. My interviewees and I bonded over the most random things, be it our birthdate, Vampire Diaries (a TV series), boyfriends or volunteering – it was amazing! 

 

 

 

 One very special moment took place during our first week in Kosovo. My group was walking along the streets of Prishtina where we met a group of friends on a square when a storm struck. As the wind and rain flared up, they brought us to their law school, a shelter from the storm. We sat down in cozy chairs and got to know each other. We had lovely conversations while waiting for the storm to end and even met more of their friends!

 

When it came to transcribing the interviews and compiling the stories we had heard into the booklet, I personally fought an internal struggle. Should we write the sentences down word for word in the booklet or correct minor grammar mistakes that simply occur when having a conversation? Should we make adjustments to make the text more comprehensible for the reader or let it be? To me, it felt weird and not right to make changes, since our central goal was to share unfiltered stories and not to speak on behalf of anyone. We developed different strategies within the group to tackle this issue.

 

The best aspects concerning this project in Kosovo were exploring a new country, being able to ask direct questions to different stakeholders during the daily meetings, and making new acquaintances and even friendsJ

 

Since the women shared very personal and sensitive information with us, the booklet will  not be published publicly. However, one woman that I interviewed allowed and actually asked me to share her story. This link leads you to a google document, in which you can take a look at the cover page, foreword and the story of Almedina, to give you an idea of the project:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qiVDLGBwL9pCCt9VkTJLxRIGCEz98T3lLz-nwh3GNyI/edit?usp=sharing