Elizabeth: I remember waking up the next morning and saying to my partner: what if I don't work for the next six months? And what if I just tried to teach these kids?

Alex: Today we’re hearing how a chance encounter sparked waves of change – not just for one woman or one community, but for generations of people.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I sneeze, the person I’m with will usually say “bless you”. But I don’t always know what to say back. Thanks? Bless you too? As English speakers, we don’t really have a clear custom.

Elizabeth: But in Albanian, there's a set pattern of words to use, so the person sneezes. The other person says {shëndetin}, which means health. And then the sneezer says {shëndetin patch?}, which means no, may you have health. And I just really like this sort of, I don't know balance of that and giving you something to say back.

Alex: This is Elizabeth Gowing. She’s an author and a speaker.

Elizabeth: So my name is Elizabeth Gowing, I'm 48 years old. And I live in Kosovo...

Alex: …where Albanian is one of the official languages. And this small kindness that people show each other when someone sneezes – it’s one of the reasons Elizabeth loves where she lives.

Elizabeth: You know it's not always an easy place, but the people are what make it feel easy and make you feel like you're welcome. There's such a strong tradition of hospitality here. There's a saying in Albanian that you welcome guests into your home with bread, salt and your hearts. And so there's this kind of sense of just giving everything to a guest.

Alex: Elizabeth, who’s from the UK, originally moved to Kosovo because of her partner’s job.

Elizabeth: He was supposed to be just working here for six months, but that was 16 years ago. So we're still here. And that's because we love it here.

Alex: To understand why Elizabeth stayed in Kosovo – – to know why the country and the people drew her in – – you first have to understand three key moments from Elizabeth’s past.

For number one, we’re going way back to Elizabeth’s primary school – in Hampshire, England.

Elizabeth: In the corner of the classroom, there was this sort of blue plastic box that sat on top of our trays, you know, our named trays. And when you had finished your work, if everyone else was still working, you had to get up very quietly and go to the box, and then take an activity out of that, to get on with.

Alex: Inside the box were little laminated cards. On one side, there would be a story of an inspirational person. And on the other were questions about their life for the kids to answer.

The cards that Elizabeth remembers the most were about inspirational women.

Elizabeth: And I would sort of - I’d steam through them, you know, I'd go and pick up Gladys Aylward, and then I do the questions on her, and then I come back and get Elizabeth Fry and learn about prison reform and do the questions on her. And then there'd be one on Grace Darling, you know, who'd lived in the lighthouse and saved lives of people drowning at sea.

Alex: These women - and crucially, the stories of their lives – really left an impression on Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: And so I think that sort of sense both of those women as inspirations, but also the sense that telling stories of inspiration matters and can change the way the reader or the listener lives their own life.

Alex: The second formative point in Elizabeth’s story came when she was in high school. Because her dad was in the air force and moved around a lot, Elizabeth went to boarding school.

Elizabeth: This was the 1980s. So this was Margaret Thatcher's Britain. This was a time when, you know, the brands and the labels and the Benetton bags and The Body Shop were really important. And that was such a new world for me, because my family's not really interested in those things and we didn't have the money to be competing. We didn't have the money to buy a Benetton top

Alex: I remember that part of being a teenager – becoming painfully aware of what everyone else is doing and saying and wearing. And wanting desperately to fit in. But Elizabeth says it was even worse at boarding school.

Elizabeth: Everything is scrutinised. So when you're at boarding school, then people know you know what shampoo you use, know every detail of your life. And, and believe me, you know, they laugh at you when you get it wrong.

Alex: For a while Elizabeth played the game like everyone else, trying her best to blend in.

Elizabeth: And then just…. I almost feel like I made a conscious decision just not to just not to worry about it. I think that is one of the biggest things that I learned from that experience of moving into that different social world, was just to stop caring – that that was the only way you were going to win, really was to stop caring what people thought about you, and whether you have the right stuff. And actually, that's a brilliant thing to learn at school – like that can then see you through the rest of your adult life, really saving you a lot of heartache, I think. And certainly I think it gave me the confidence to do some of the things where I also didn't fit in.

Alex: And Elizabeth got a confidence boost from her English teacher Mrs. Melhuish, who ran a public speaking programme at the school.

Elizabeth: To have somebody really dedicated to telling you know, how to hold yourself to, how to deal with criticism in debate or how to answer negative feedback. And to have that as something you can learn, you know, to see these things as skills that can be then taught is very liberating. And that is a part of social mobility, and it's a part of demanding your rights. And it's a part of being able to articulate, as a woman, your place in the world.

Alex: The third moment takes us forward in time to when Elizabeth was working at a primary school in Hackney, east London. Some of the kids were Travellers, as there was a Travellers community based next to the school.

Elizabeth remembers one little girl in particular – Sally.

Elizabeth: She had long hair which she used to wear in this very meticulous platt down her back and she was very, extremely well behaved and studious and sweet and I just, well, all children deserve to go on to secondary school, but she really deserved to go on to secondary school… go on and do well and have choices in life and I could see that there was the likelihood that she was not going to transition to secondary school because that's often the point where kids fall through the system.

As a teacher, you don't always get to see a child's background. You don't always get to go and drink tea with their mum or you know, visit and realise the realities of their living conditions and see the pressures that they're having to deal with in looking after loads of younger brothers and sisters and helping hanging out the washing and doing all of that, in Sally's case in a trailer. So where there were lots of you know, facilities that were lacking. And as well as of course, the racism basically that her family and their neighbours were dealing with.

Alex: But Elizabeth did go and drink tea with Sally’s mum. During her visit, Elizabeth asked Sally’s mum if she could check that Sally was bringing her books home and doing her homework reading.

Elizabeth: And her mum said, is Sally the one with a letter that looks like this. And with her finger, she like drew the letter S. And I realised that her mum couldn't read and write. So she couldn't even see whose bookbag it was that had come home from school. And so being frustrated because she wasn't doing enough reading at home was really missing the point because just having somebody who could recognise her name on the bookbag was the first challenge.

Alex: Elizabeth took the time to understand what Sally, her family and her wider community was going through – so that she could help Sally in a meaningful way.

Elizabeth: And in the end, I walked with her to the secondary school for her to register there. It was the sense of her being on her way to her future, her being on her way to register at secondary school, and that she was, you know, literally making a journey that was going to be taking her forward.

Alex: This brings us back to Kosovo. Pristina, to be exact – the country’s capital. Elizabeth had been living there for a few years when she met another little girl – one who would completely change her life.

Pristina is a bustling European capital. It’s got a busy nightlife and young population. Just a few miles outside the city is an area that’s home to the Ashkali community.

Elizabeth: And a lot of the Ashkali live from rubbish pickings. So they go through the garbage, and they look for stuff that can be recycled. So they go looking for aluminium and the kids jump into the skips and rummage through the bags to find any kind of aluminium or plastic that they can then sell on. There's no formal recycling in Kosovo. So they are Kosovo’s recyclers. So you can imagine that work is obviously dirty and unhealthy. And for children doing it, it means that they're not at school, or they're trying to juggle it along with school.

Alex: In fact, in 2012, it was estimated that only 4% of the community had finished compulsory schooling.

Elizabeth: You know, when you've got that level of lack of education, of course, that impacts on everything else. So it impacts on being very easily exploited and making poor health choices and not having ways out.

They have very poor health outcomes, very high child mortality, very low life expectancy.

Alex: Elizabeth was visiting the local area when she happened to meet a nine-year-old girl called Jelana.

Elizabeth: Just by chance, she mentioned that she wanted to go to school, but that she wasn't allowed to because the school wasn't letting her.

Alex: At first Elizabeth was sceptical. The school wasn’t letting her go? How could that be?

Elizabeth: And so I went to check with the school. And the school said, Oh, no, she can't, unless she can pass a test, which, as my friend said, is a bit like being made to show that you're healthy to get into hospital, like you can't pass a test if you've not been in school.

Alex: Now Elizabeth was confused.

Elizabeth: It seems just obvious, it seems like a no brainer. If there's a nine year old girl, she wants to go to school, like why is there not a mechanism for her to be there?

Alex: Most people would probably feel sad or frustrated about this – but then… let it go. Not take things any further. Elizabeth is not most people.

Elizabeth: So I went to the Ministry of Education. And I said, you know, I think there's a misunderstanding, I think this head teacher is saying that this girl can't come to school. And the woman at the Ministry of Education said to me ah, no, they're just too hard to teach. And so that really drove me mad. The idea of any child being considered too hard to teach.

And so I told Jelana that I could teach her to pass this test.

Alex: But what Jelana said in response – – it stopped Elizabeth in her tracks.

Elizabeth: Because Jelana said, “Well can my friends come?” And I just think that that is such a powerful thing to say, basically, when we have an opportunity to then see that we can pay that forward and share it. And she saw that.

Alex: Elizabeth went with Jelana to her home and met many more kids just like her. Kids who weren’t in school – but wanted to be there. She realised the issue was huge.

That night, Elizabeth couldn’t sleep. She lay in bed, wide awake.

Elizabeth: That night was the night where I thought back to Elizabeth Fry and Gladys Aylward and all of the… like… Oh, my goodness, somebody really needs to do something about this.

Alex: Elizabeth was actually well placed to be the one to do something. She was a teacher, she could speak Albanian. Nevertheless, she was scared…

Elizabeth: Like, I'm not going to achieve this. And I'll look stupid. But again, going back to, you know what I learned about the Bennetton bag, I guess, maybe, well, maybe I will look stupid, I'll just have to, you know, deal with that. I'm not going to worry about what other people might think if it doesn't work out. So it's worth trying.

Alex: By the next morning, she’d made a decision: she was going to give herself six months. Six months to teach the kids, and help them pass the test to get into school.

Elizabeth: Within a couple of weeks, we'd found– we'd rented a room above a little mini market in the community. And Jelana went off and you know, told her friends that you can come and learn in this, this bare room, I literally had to take curtains from home and spread them on this floor for us to sit on because it was just bare concrete. And I thought that maybe you know, five kids would come on the first morning. And then maybe by the end of the first week, we'd be up to 20 or something. But on the first day, we had 23 kids come and by the end of the first week, we had 50 children coming.

Alex: Volunteers chipped in for pencils or came to give an art class. Elizabeth would spend the mornings teaching – and raising awareness in the afternoons. Telling whoever would listen how outrageous it was that these children wanted to be in school and effectively weren’t allowed.

Elizabeth: I’d told my partner that I'd give it six months, and it was like five months in two weeks or something. And still, there was no chance of these children being accepted into school. And then I got a phone call to say that the school was going to let them in. So, you know, that felt like just an extraordinary achievement for those kids.

Alex: But the work didn’t stop there. The need didn’t stop there. So what started in that bare room with curtains on the floor, grew into a fully fledged charity. It’s called The Ideas Partnership.

Elizabeth: I'm very proud of the Ideas Partnership, because it's I think Kosovo’s third largest volunteer organisation. We work in five different centres. And within education, we offer preschool, we offer support for kids who are in school, we also offer adult education, so women's literacy, so that Sally's mum could now come and learn to read and write, and bursaries for older kids or adults who wants to go to high school or even to university.

Alex: And it’s not just education: the charity works to ensure safe and healthy pregnancies – to tackle the Ashkali’s high child mortality rate. Another focus is social work.

Elizabeth: So trying to tackle early marriage so that kids who do get to school actually stay in school, rather than the girls dropping out to be married off. I mean, illegally, not really married, but married, you know, at the age of 13, or 14.

Alex: Elizabeth also set up a social business to employ mothers – but on the condition that their kids go to school.

Elizabeth: So we're trying to break that cycle. So the children aren't going out looking for aluminium and plastic in the skips, but they’re in school, and the income they would have brought to their families is being earned by their mums. And we know that when women are the wage earners, that money tends to go more directly to their families than when men are.

Alex: The charity has been running for 11 years now, so those first few kids who Elizabeth helped – some of them are married, a few even have kids of their own.

Elizabeth: In one case, we’ve got a child at our kindergarten whose dad came to our centre, when we very first started. So, you know, we can see that generational shift in what's possible, and how things can change within a generation. And that's very inspiring.

Alex: It makes me think back to Jelana’s words on the very first day she met Elizabeth… “can my friends come?”

Elizabeth: I think at the time she said them, I didn't realise the power of them. You know, it just was sort of an administrative question of like, how many people could sit around my chair while I was teaching.

Alex: But this idea – can my friends come – it’s at the heart of how the Idea Partnership works. It’s about taking the time to understand what a community actually needs, and then genuinely empowering those people.

Take Arlinda, for instance.

Elizabeth: So Arlinda is a mother of five kids, and she didn't go to school, and she couldn't read and write. And she came to learn to read and write at our centre. And learned really quickly; I just cannot imagine how hard it must be to learn reading and writing as an adult.

Alex: She then launched her own business selling a range of products, including beautiful mosaic earrings that are made from recycled CDs.

Elizabeth: I love this philosophy of second chances, you know, second chances to the, to the CDs, and second chances for someone like her being able to learn even though she missed out on school.

Alex: During the pandemic, Arlinda got a grant to buy a sewing machine and made reusable fabric masks – which she then distributed for free to the local community.

Elizabeth: She's so inspiring because she did something really hard like learnt these skills, she then was paid that forward to enable other people to keep safe. And that for me is real inspiration, not just achieving something for yourself, but then achieving for others.

Alex: Which of course, is exactly what Elizabeth has done. Channeling her love of story-telling, her courage to question the status quo, and her empathy – into something that’s making ripples of change for the community and for future generations.

Elizabeth: The real test of any initiative is the sustainability of it. And so although I hope I'm going to be part of the Ideas Partnership forever, I don't want it to be Elizabeth's Ideas Partnership. It's got to be something that's taken on beyond me if it's going to really be successful. And that's when I feel really proud.

Alex: Elizabeth’s caring nature and her desire to improve the lives of the people around her has been a powerful driving force for change. It is fascinating to see how it all began with one child, Jelana, and Elizabeth’s desire to help alter the course of her future. In doing this, Elizabeth opened up new possibilities for a neglected community. As a result, in 2016, Elizabeth received recognition from the President of Kosovo, being awarded the Mother Teresa medal for her humanitarian work. The following year she was also named a “point of light” by former British Prime Minister Teresa May for her global volunteering work. The focus now is on mentoring the future custodians of her charitable work through Global Giving. This is a nonprofit organisation that connects donors with grassroots projects around the world. The Ideas Project is also fundraising for a brand new building of their own where they can hold all of their classes and projects. Isn’t it amazing how much can be achieved through a desire to make positive change?