One emerging leader at a time. Your support of Tremendous Leadership enables us to supply funding to a particular school located in Mitrovica, Kosovo. The Kosovo Leadership Academy (KLA) is a 6th through 12th-grade school. This entity spoke to my heart because it touches what I am most passionate about—youth, education, and character building.
The last time I was tuned into this part of the world was as an Air Force Officer deployed to Aviano Air Base, Italy in the '90s. The Balkan area had been marred by ethnic cleansing where neighbor turned on neighbor. Even today grievances from wartime atrocities and demarcation issues are still understandably harbored. In 2016, I visited the Kosovo Leadership Academy (KLA) as a donor to witness the ribbon cutting of the first wing of their school. I was asked to come on the advisory board and said yes. I was asked to go and teach for a week in January 2018 and said yes. And I recently returned (last week) from another week of training a tremendous group of individuals.
The youth of Kosovo are at an exciting crossroad. Theirs is the first generation to grow up with peace and democracy and has the youngest population in all of Europe with 50 percent under the age of 25. Unemployment is also high (40 percent), so for the young people to rebuild their country and not have to resort to protesting in the streets or emigrating, they must build their economy and infrastructure.
I taught roughly 125 students and spent one-on-one time with many of them. Their transparency and optimism were palpable. They also firmly grasp that they are in a leadership school which means, they not only get the intellectual training but the character building as well. We covered personality profiles, followership styles, Holland career typology, critical thinking skills, and even how to create win-win situations. I spent time with the pre-school, reading various books from the Pups of Publishing, and also got a manuscript from a student on the plight of the environment and animals in Kosovo, which we are going to publish.
I also met with a veterinarian in Kosovo, who dreams of building a large clinic to take care of the massive problem of stray street dogs. I even shuttled two rescue dogs back to their new homes in Maryland to a tremendous collaboration between Kosovo Pet Rescuers and the SPCA of Anne Arundel County.
My youth coordinator, Cynthia Walsh, has reached out to many of you about how you can bring these programs into your school, camps, ministries, and homes. An educated mind is useless unless set upon a firm foundation of character development. We'd love to help impact your future leaders and thank you for your continued support of Tremendous Leadership, which allows us to change the world one child, and pup, at a time!!
