Changing revenge into love: CNE podcast about Christian schooling in Albania
Klementina Shahini. Photo CNE, Joe-Lize Kruijsse-Brugge, Canva
European Union
Klementina started her Christian school in 2011 with almost nothing. Now, she welcomes 220 pupils every day and is the best school in the region.
It sounds like a success story, but Klementina Shahini still has enormous challenges. Money has always been high on the headache list, Klementina shares with Evert van Vlastuin in the CNE podcast.
The state does not pay anything to Lezha Academic Center, Klementina says. More than half of the money (60 per cent) comes from the parents. The rest is brought in through fundraising from Canada, the United States and Germany. “The mentality of fundraising does not exist in the former Eastern European countries”, Shahini says.
She came to the idea of starting a Christian school in her country when Klementina was in the US for 12 years with her husband, Dini. “One day, if we get rich, then I want to start a school”, she said to Dini. When they returned in 2011, they were rich – spiritually, not financially.
But very quickly, they got the school license and started with seven pupils. After that, it was one chain of growth and expansion.
Klementina and Dini decided to return to Lezha and start the school there. They were brought up there in Muslim families. Soon after the collapse of Communism, they were touched by the Gospel through missionaries sent by Brother Andrew.
“Actually, we decided to listen to check how much English we understood”, Klementina says. “But my husband raised his hand to change his life. And as a good Muslim wife, I followed him.” But more than thirty years later, she “never regretted” this choice.
The school building is full with Bible texts and had a different atmosphere, Klementine says. Many children are brought up with revenge at home, in a culture that has a history of honour killings. “We replace that with love”, Klementina says.
In the podcast, she explains more about their Roma project in which they invite one Roma child every year to study for free.
In the education style, Klementina’s school said farewell to the outdated “Russian style”, she says. That is the teacher-oriented approach to education. In Lezha, they have replaced that with a “hands-on style” that has the student at the centre.
