The newly reconstructed village of Thumane, one of the worst-hit areas by a devastating earthquake in November 2019 which is now steadily recovering under the post-earthquake recovery and reconstruction programme, hosted a sports celebration event, including a conference on sports as a real engine of development.
Prime Minister Edi Rama visited the village of Thumane, Kruja Municipality, who addressed the conference as a participant in the event’s first panel “Sports serving health, education and development.”
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Thank you very much for this event! I don’t think anyone would have ever imagined back then on those terrible days, when Thumane was the earthquake’s epicentre, that a few years later we would come together here in this village along with so many previous and current champions and representatives of all sports federations to utilize the infrastructure of one of the best sport facilities in Albania in terms of community sports ground, and with this community service building that represents a new model for Thumane, but a model that other much bigger cities currently lack.
But this is a reality now.
I happened to hear many expressing gratitude to me and I don’t like to sound and act as a humble person, yet I would like to that the post-earthquake reconstruction project as a whole and the one implemented here in Thumane in particular, since we are here in Thumane, would have been absolutely impossible without everyone else who were engaged in the discussions. Artur, perhaps being overwhelmed by emotions, even misunderstood my word I actually said, since I didn’t say: “I don’t want anyone to question this.” Indeed, I said something totally different.
Building Thumane back was a challenge on its own, also for the fact that when we arrived here, people were shocked and still terrified because of what they had been through.
The area was hit really hard and local residents were still terrified of what they had been through. An improvised camp of makeshift tents had been set up at the football pitch and distrust absolutely prevailed. Local residents didn’t trust anyone even if they were told that everything was to be built back better and stronger. It was as if you were telling them: “Despite everything, listen to some lies too.” And one of the things I told people we met that night was that given that someone was worried about the sports field, we will build more such fields. And we actually delivered, for the sake of truth, because many forces came together. I can’t help but mention the Albanians for Albanians Foundation, since Ilir is here and he has overseen the project since the very onset until all the single-family homes were built here.
We have been in close and continued contact and we even have discussed the troubles facing people sometimes, quite understandably, make things more difficult. When construction kicked off and new houses started taking shape, many families were involved in disputes. In certain cases, families have even filed for divorce in a bid to benefit an additional home and this is understandable since the reconstruction programme was actually designed as a social housing project too, with many families living and sharing the same house they had lost in the earthquake were now entitled to benefit a new house for each of them. However, the end result was really satisfactory for the people, yet it is not equally satisfactory for us, for me at least, as we now face the challenge of how to keep today’s event alive and even turn it into a tradition.
The challenge we face now is how to turn this complex into continuously inhabited one and that can be used for sport events, not only for local children here in a spontaneous way, but also by many other people in an organized way and I would avail myself of this opportunity to thank Fidel who organized this event and brought us all together here. It is important for each and every one to see and experience firsthand and it would be then easier to think about what to do. The UN Resident Coordinator in Albania is attending this event too.
The UN country office has been playing a paramount role in the entire post-earthquake reconstruction programme, being tasked with implementing the EU funds for construction of schools and education facilities. We are actually talking about sports, but the area is also home to some of the most beautiful and modern school buildings in Albania that meet optimum standards.
Therefore, I avail myself of this opportunity to also express gratitude to the UN Resident Coordinator and her team.
I would also like to thank the President of the Olympic Committee of North Macedonia who has joined us today. Fidel had actually forgotten to employ a translator for him as he thinks that everyone understands him.
In a nutshell, I would like to underline that we have laid the foundation stone of the sports movement in schools. We have definitely wasted a lot of valuable time. A lot of time has been wasted previously, but also now. I don’t want to blame others for everything, but one should admit that a huge gap has been created between different generations regarding physical education and sports. And we all know that the sports movement in schools is not about the talented ones who would lead a career in sports and are set to become professional sportsmen, yet it represents the basis to spot the future talents. However, the very first foundation stone has been already laid. We have allocated a certain state budget support for the Olympic Committee under the new state budget bill to support the sports movement in schools, so that we can face this challenge now to make sure this isn’t just a spontaneous event, but an annual tradition. And of course, it is not sufficient that we focus on hand and ball-striking games for girls and boys only and I mean namely volleyball and basketball, but we need to expand the range of sport disciplines to include other sport federations too. We can’t certainly form a weightlifting team or a ping-pong team in every school, but a team for four or five schools in a certain area or region. We should also expand spaces and increase opportunities for kids to engage in various sport disciplines.
Third, it is crucially important that we further consolidate and enhance organizational capacities to build on the schools championship we already launched and which yielded very good outcomes in terms of energizing and providing children and young people the opportunity to engage in more after school activities, and I mean not only children with a certain gift in sports but also other kids and their parents too.
Fourth, it is important that we go on with the efforts to expand the sports infrastructure. Many school gyms have been built across Albania. They were almost nonexistent previously, but we still need to build many more gym facilities and it has already become a norm that newly-built schools also house indoor gyms and outdoor sport grounds.
It is also definitely crucial that we help a category of more talented schoolchildren and high school students so that they can train more and in a more specialized way, as it has been the case with the sport classroom once. Taking notice that representatives of the Olympic Committee, the Federations of the Olympic Committee are attending this event, I would like to assure every one of my commitment and readiness to boost support for the federations in addition to the sports movement in schools. However, the sports movement in schools is a top priority for us. It is a priority for 1001 reasons that I am not going to mention one by one and have nothing to do with the plan to produce sportswomen and sportswomen throughout the country, but these reasons are about other aspects of the sport as a unique and irreplaceable discipline in order to press ahead with our common goal to raise awareness for the sports’ importance to the physical health, the sense of belonging and team spirit.
Thank you very much!
