"We Can Face the Future Now"

 “It was truly one of the happiest days of our lives,”

Servete (top) and her family with their Heifer goat. © Heifer International

 remembers Servete Ramadani, who’s raising her children with her mother-in-law’s help in a small Kosovan village that suffered greatly during the 1999 conflict. It’s not the day they returned home she’s remembering – it’s the day she and her neighbors received 42 goats from Heifer. 

More than 900,000 people were forced to flee their homeland during the 1999 Kosovo conflict, seeking refuge in Albania and other neighboring countries.

Those who didn’t flee lost their lives - between 20,000 and 25,000 people were killed, mostly men and young boys. Thousands of homes were burned or bombed, and many farms were destroyed. As a result, over 70 percent of the animals in Kosovo were killed, stolen or slaughtered by the Serbs and their collaborators.

In Servete Ramadani’s tiny village of Krusha E Madhe, her husband and brother were among the more than 206 villagers who were killed. She is still searching for their bodies.

At the conflict’s end, hundreds of thousands of Kosovans tried to return to their homes and pick up the pieces of their lives.

“When we returned to our village,” said Ilmije Hiseni, who lives above Krusha e Madhe in a small Roma community, “this is when we understood what poor means. We heard someone was giving away biscuits. We took what we could and that is how we survived for weeks… but it was impossible.”

Heifer initiated the first Kosovo project immediately after the war, focusing on extensive agricultural and animal husbandry training, but it wasn’t easy at first.

“Everything had been destroyed,” said Heifer Kosovo Director Nuridin Mestani said. “There were victims everywhere.”

The animals that had survived were deteriorating rapidly. Their shelters had been destroyed, and many were left to fend for themselves as families sought refuge in neighboring countries.

But now, just three years later, 70 families in Krusha E Madhe alone have received cows directly from Heifer, and at least 30 more now have cows or goats as part of Heifer’s “Passing on the Gift” cornerstone.

It was the goats’ arrival that Servete remembers so vividly.

Krusha kids. © Heifer International

Ilmije’s neighbor, Ganimete Mamutaj, lost her husband and a son in the conflict.

“Our village is known in all of Kosovo as the most

Ganimete Mamutaj and her son Amrush. © Heifer International

“Today, because of Heifer International’s help, we have an opportunity to face the future.”