Garda City Council Extends Support for Kosovo Child and Social Causes

Her name is Desarta Shala, an 11-year-old boy living in Kosovo, and a lot has been discussed in the Garda City Council about how to help him.

It was a very special council session, involving middle school students, convened as it has been for a few years now as part of the Unicef project.

Desarta Shala is the beneficiary of an initiative proposed over a year ago by the Pisanello middle schools and adopted by the Municipality: providing remote assistance to a Kosovan child through a donation of 300,000 lire.

It was the mayor, Giorgio Comencini, who explained that the operation had been successful.

This was confirmed by a drawing sent by the young Kosovan.

At this point, everyone agreed that the remote adoption should be extended for at least three more years.

Social Commitment and Concrete Actions

The Youth Council, after all, was entirely focused on social commitment.

Topics far from the usual agenda of a council session were discussed.

They talked about canceling public debt for poor countries, the exploitation of child labor, and supporting young people from unfortunate nations.

They also made concrete decisions: adopting an initiative that encourages public administrations to avoid purchasing products made with child labor, subscribing to the Unicef project “A Better Life for the Children of Nepal,” and supporting the initiative to reduce foreign debt of low-income countries.

Most of these resolutions were symbolic, but meaningful and with some practical impact, such as allocating one and a half million lire for the Nepal project.

This was all made possible thanks to proposals from the Pisanello middle schools: students and teachers studied these issues in depth and demonstrated their understanding during the council meeting.

The discussion was quite extensive, involving not only council members but also students and teachers.

Considerations on Products Derived from Child Labor

Let’s take the case of products resulting from child labor.

Some students observed, “If we didn’t buy these, the exploiters would lose out too, and would be forced to treat children better.”

This hypothesis is correct, but an objection was raised by another student: “It could also go the other way—the exploiters, seeing their earnings decrease, might treat children worse.”

Then a third student asked, “When we buy something, how can we tell if it was made by children?”

The mayor tried to answer: “When products are already on the market, it’s difficult. But we can urge our government officials to ban the entry of these products, preventing them from entering our market.”

This is the substance of the resolution passed by the City Council.