Gazmend’s Journey in the ICT field powered by ODK and VoRAE
Access to qualitative and inclusive employment opportunities has always been a challenge to minority groups such as the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian community in Kosovo. Nevertheless, the Voice of Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian (VoRAE) NGO based in Gracanica, through its programs aims to bridge this divide by facilitating internships for the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian youth through collaborating with other NGOs, businesses and other institutions.
At the same time, Open Data Kosovo (ODK) aims to empower youth from all backgrounds to develop their tech skills, and the collaboration with VoRAE made this easier. As such, Open Data Kosovo happily collaborated with VoRAE to host Gazmend Zikolli, a 20 year old Computer Science student at AAB College and a volunteer at VoRAE, who was part of the ODK Technical Team from July to October 2020.
Gazmend speaks of his experience at ODK with great motivation and enthusiasm. Due to the circumstances caused by COVID-19, the internship took place online. Nevertheless, the learning process never stopped. As Gazmend pointed out, he never previously worked in these circumstances which made it interesting, challenging, and but also very beneficial to his development in the ICT field.
Gazmend worked on the Distance Learning platform which is funded by UNICEF and Austrian Development Agency, where he got to work on weekly activities, content management, and overall working with Wordpress-powered websites.
Furthermore, during this time, Gazmend along with the ODK Technical Team got to collaborate with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, who is a partner in this platform. Such collaboration fostered the development of skills such as working with various stakeholders towards the same goals. Thus serving as a great learning experience for Gazmend. As pointed out by Senad, Employment Officer at VoRAE, the program hugely affected the employability prospects of Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian youth who are part of the program and the program can serve as a stepping stone towards their successful career development.
Moreover, Gazmend’s motivation to work in the ICT field stems from his dream from when he was very young to work on innovative solutions which make the workings of citizens, institutions or businesses much easier.
Such collaboration between ODK and VoRAE makes it possible for youth from disadvantaged backgrounds to benefit from learning experiences, thus ODK highly encourages other organizations to collaborate with organizations such as VoRAE, and also work upon their programs to be more inclusive.
