Say YES to Rural Development by Sanja Mihajlovska

Starting from 3rd until 13th of June, Volunteers Center Skopje in corporation with local Brajcino’s NGO Support for rural development – 2011 Brajcino and financially encouraged by the YiA Programme, welcomed more than 25 young people to join the Youth Exchange, also known as: “Say YES to rural development”. Participants coming from all over Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia and Poland, had an opportunity to say YES to the rural development in Brajcino, to its authentic beauty, untouched nature and old architecture that lives in accordance with the modern houses. The 10 days lasting project was set in one of the many old houses, true old and authentic home, gathering young people from South East Europe and bit above. This village was welcoming so many youths for the first time and the local peasants were more than willing and eager to help us through the whole process.

Now at the very end since the time flies like an arrow, when we looked back we are more than happy to say that we managed to make a change, a better change for this small but rich community. For the period of just 10 days, we managed to build a summer house for the local villagers as well as for the tourists, to clean the tourist paths up to the mountains, as well as to clean the local river and the centre of the village, to design new roadmaps in order to mark all monasteries and churches surrounding Brajcino and to explore more possible ways of promoting the eco-tourism.

There is no doubt that the new opening season will surely be memorable, since this beautiful place will became even more attractive, not only for the people coming from all around the world, but for us as well, living in this beautiful country without knowing how rich it is. Written by Sanja Mihajlovska coming from Macedonian group. …
‘This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.’