User:Blinë Pireva

Have Shala
She was born in 1966 in the village of Lugu in Barani, in the Municipality of Peja, in a large typical family of the Dukagjin Plain. The first child of the family to survive, five of her parents' children died before Mrs. Shala was born. She had not felt treated as a girl, the status of the girl in the big Albanian family is somehow already known and maybe this was a kind of privilege for her.

Biography
Mrs. Shala completed her eight-year schooling at the Tushec village school and was fortunate that her father at that time was an immigrant in Germany and Switzerland for a total of three years. He somehow brought a new spirit, a new outlook to women, to girls, in this case to him. This was very important and she used it because the time coincided, the time she finished primary school with the time her father was abroad as an immigrant. She was also lucky enough to be given the right to continue high school in Peja with the dedication of her class monitor.

She finished high school at the "Shaban Spahia" gymnasium. In fact, it took a year and a half, because in December 1984 she was arrested along with six other girls, six girls and two boys in total. The so-called "Group of girls in Peja" at that time. That was why this was purely a political reason. They were committed to the freedom of expression, to protest against the things that happened at that time in the school, on the street. You didn't need an intellectual, you didn't necessarily need an adult, you didn't need someone that smart. It took someone who was honest with himself, someone who was aware that he wanted a life of dignity to decide to do something against that regime, against the bans or to follow the path of the poor and say: "I just want to care for myself." This was possible, but thankfully these, as well as many other young people of Kosovo, chose the first path, namely the path of confrontation and resistance, which I never regretted.

Challenges after prison and the Blood Reconciliation Action
After being released from prison, she participated in the protests of the time. In the wake of the demonstrations, the idea of ​​starting the Blood Reconciliation Action was born - an action in which Have Shala was active throughout the reconciliation year.

In 1991, she came to Switzerland as a politically persecuted person. "Getting out of prison did not mean freedom for a former political prisoner. Getting out of prison was just the beginning of new pursuits and pursuits. The time of my release from prison was the time of the suppression of Kosovo's autonomy, therefore also the time of many protests and demonstrations in which of course I could not be absent... There were also provocations and attempts at arrest", she confesses.

But coming to Switzerland was another challenge for Hava, certainly without the pains she was used to in Kosovo. This challenge was the integration into the society of the new country. Learning German was also a challenge, but a challenge without facing which you could not enter the challenge called "integration". For him, integration was employment itself, communication with the district, with the authorities, following the social and political currents in the country.

Work with Albanian students
In 1991, there was no question of any level of education and integration of our compatriots here. With the increase in the wave of refugees, the need for support from former activists also increased. They, in the process of their integration, also integrated others. Mrs. Shala also had this fate. The immediate need was to join the educational process of supplementary education. In Albanian children, he saw the possibility of passing on some of the basic knowledge of the language and culture of the homeland. Through working with children, he managed to get to know the difficulties and preoccupations of Albanian families. In two of the schools of the city of Zurich, supplementary learning in the Albanian language was integrated into the regular teaching process, which offered opportunities for cooperation with teachers of regular schools and in achieving pedagogical-didactic qualifications. Today Mrs. Shala works mainly as a counselor at the Office for Integration in Winterthur and social-pedagogical family follower.