Farmers with a View / Fermerë me pamje nga deti

Culture Camp
Currently in Albania there are no overnight summer camps. In North America
and many parts of Europe, summer camp is an annual tradition, giving parents
some time alone and the kids a fun new social group. Many of these kinds of
summer camps even focus on culture. This is an important thing to young
modern families, especially in diaspora communities who feel like they are
losing touch with the culture of their upbringing, and who wish for their
children to have a connection to it as well. In conversations, even parents in
Tirana express that the modern pace of life is putting their kids out of touch with
traditions like singing, dancing, and even language.
Placing a summer camp inside one of the villages would make a positive
impact in a number of areas. Using locals as teachers of traditional crafts,
dances, and song, would give a good reason for those traditions to stay alive.
Having groups of 15 to 20 kids of different ages living in the village for a week at
a time over the course of the summer would bring back a very lacking age group
and the sense of energy it brings to the villages which are now mostly elderly
people and middle aged tourists only. The presence of a camp would bring
sustained financial impact too. Kids could stay at “homestays” in the village
Qeparo, 08/09/15
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