Home » Reports/Newsletters » Newsletter 40


Evridika Shashkova

Now, after less than a decade and half, when I remember my principal fascination of a syntagm so simple but by its message so grandiose, -it gave me the creeps, just like the first time I ever heard it. “Nothing in this world is worth as much as one tear of a child”. It stuck on my heart, it crawled under my skin… 
 
In those early 90’s I wan an adolescent who (by default of the age) was searching for the firm values of one’s existence. But in those years, I and some of you dear friends, was in a constant state of shock from the strength of the insanity of the war and the devastation of all those civilization benefits which until that moment, were a common denominator of us and Europe. Just then, the constant drive to respond to the evil with the best from ourselves had taken me straight to the office at blvd. Ilinden bb, which at the time was only1x1m large. Behind the office furniture which obviously had been the latest fashion fad somewhere in the middle of the 70’s of the previous century and time had already left its mark on it, Gorde and Dragi were sitting (Zmijanac, as you might have already assumed). When I talk over and over about this moment after so much time has gone by, I often say “shining”, not “sitting”. Shining from within, from their souls. In the common Balkan darkness that darkened our spirit on a daily basis, I saw my initial light right there in the building of the former Central Committee behind the old furniture swamped with materials. Not to fetishize, what shined so bright was actually the most noble idea that took the Zmijanac couple to an adventure that still lasts: to be a missionary for protection of children and their rights, for respecting and developing their personalities.. And I was driven too by its magnetic force. All the rest is my tiny, personal, but precious history.

On children’s land I don’t feel like an alien for a long time now, because after all the fight to reach every place where humanitarian help is needed and to alleviate children’s trauma (in those times especially the pain of children-refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina), to write about children’s destinies (the first newsletters are part of me), or to provide help from the head office of THE FIRST CHILDREN’S EMBASSY IN THE WORLD “MEGJASHI” and from there to “fire upon” the world with every resources of altruism available.. it makes me a real ally of children’s people and a faithful guardian of their rights and their peace. And all of this because of the simplest reason possible: “Nothing in this world is worth as much as one tear of a child”. I still think so.

Evridika Shashkova, Journalist