Klementina started her Christian school in 2011 with almost nothing. Now, she welcomes 220 pupils every day and is the best school in the region around Lezha.
When Klementina Shahini was a child, nobody would have guessed that she would start the only Protestant Christian school in Albania. She was raised in a Muslim family. Together with her husband, she came to faith in Jesus shortly after the fall of Communism.
Lezha Academic Center is now the best-performing school in the region around Lezha. Klementina has worked on this for 14 years.
The Albanian state does not have money for Klementina's school. Only Muslim, Orthodox, or Roman Catholic schools receive funding. Therefore, finance has always been a central challenge for the school. But so far, the school has survived.
Welcome to the CNE podcast. My name is Evert van Vlaastuin and I will take you to talks about dilemmas and challenges for Christians in Europe. And this week we have Clementina Shahini, founder of the Lejja Academic Centrein Albania. And although you are on a long distance, but welcome to the podcast, Clementina.
Speaker C
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker A
And you are in Lejja at the moment. How do you pronounce that as an Albanian?
Speaker C
Leja.
Speaker A
Leja, yeah. And where is that in Albania?
Speaker C
Leja is a beautiful town in Albania. It's 30 minutes north of the capital of Tirana. We have the mountains, we have the sea, we have everything that we need to live.
Speaker A
Okay, yes. And your school is one of the few Christian schools in the country or even the only one?
Speaker C
It's the only one that is licensed as a Christian school in the country. Although there are a lot of people that love to get involved in Christian education, they have not been able to get licensed to operate as a Christian school.
Speaker A
Okay, well, let's focus on Albania first. What type of country is Albania from, let's say, spiritual perspective?
Speaker C
Albania is a secular state or country, I would say. The constitution of Albania guarantees freedom of religion. There is no official religion, but if you read the statistics, if you learn more about the religion in Albania, you see that 70 or 75%of Albanians is Muslim.
Speaker A
Muslim.
Speaker C
Right. And the rest of it is Catholic, Orthodox Catholic and some Christians now. I have to say that they consider themselves Muslims, but they don't practice it.
Speaker A
They don't practice. so they are not active, not very religious.
Speaker C
They say that I'm Muslim, but they have never been in mosque, let me put it this way. The culture here is that they call themselves Muslim or Orthodox or Catholicbased on the history of the family or all the names. And this happens because during communism Albania had no religion religion was considered a poison for the country and if you mention the name orif you practice it you'll be killed or put in jail for the rest of your life
Speaker A
yeah I remember that it was actually the only one non or atheist country in the
Speaker C
world exactly the most isolated communist country in the world and does that still has consequences it does because you know the old generations still think the same the same waytransition is not easy because the communist system has brainwashed all the Albanians and it takes time especially for the generation that lived during that time.
Speaker A
Yeah. And how is that now? I mean in the Albanian constitution, is there any reference to religion or to God or whatever?
Speaker C
It's freedom of religion and the three main religions, Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim are recognized by the country, by the constitution.Christians are accepted. And when the religion representatives come together to the events for the government, four leaders are there. But Christians do not get any support from the country, from the government.
Speaker A
And all the religions, do they get support?
Speaker C
They do. They do. They are part of the budget part of the budget yes government budget yes they get money from them but not christians and as christians we are fighting for it but we
Speaker A
don't know how successful so the the muslims they get money from tirana from the capital yes for
Speaker C
what for operation building church must have different activities. So even their celebrations are recognized by the government.
Speaker A
Okay. Well, in Western Europe, we see sometimes that secularism seems to be the new norm, the new standard for the public sphere. How is that in Albania then?
Speaker C
It's the same. So you have to be very brave to come out and say that I'm Christian and we are talking about our experience. My husband and I, we both come from a Muslim background. So you were born a Muslim? Yes.And your husband too? Exactly. My family was not as much strong Muslim or they did to practice.So it was hard when we became Christians because we were the first Christians in our area and one of the first Christians in the country.And we were the first ones, after 50 years, baptized in public. And that was not easy. And it was a lot of accusation and a lot of people were angry at us and accusing us for
Speaker A
different things but how did you come to to faith then um clementina right um there was when albania
Speaker C
opened there was a group of missionaries from all over the world uh brother andrew organized this and they came to Albania for the first time ever after 50 years that Albania was closed and then preached the gospel under the name God Loves Albania. So during that time,they went to Tirana and gave concert and preached about the gospel for two days. The minister of the culture during that time was someone from our city. So he invited them to come to Lesha and we were walking from Dini's parents,Dini is my husband, to our plane when we heard someone that was speaking in English and we stopped and my husband said that let's turn around and hear what they sayand you can check how much English you know. And that was the first reason why we thought that that was the reason, but God had a plan for us.
Speaker A
So you didn't listen to the gospel, but to the English.
Speaker C
Just the English. And then when we went there and we were listening to the preachers, and at one point, Sam Skeggs, one of the preachers said,if you want your life to change, raise a hand and we'll pray for you. And my husband was one of the people that raised his hand. And as a Muslim's wife, I did the same thing. So they,they prayed. It was a huge crowd of people there. And then after the meeting, they said that if you were one of the people that raised the hand and or prayed for you, we want to meet you on a personal level.This is where our journey started. And it was not that we became Christian right away. I think that they left and they came back the next summer.And that was the time that I was helping the team that came to hand out Bibles house to house. And people were asking questions. And actually, I was translating,but at the same time, I was learning a lot about the Bible, God, and the messages.
Speaker A
Did you ever regret that you raised your hand?
Speaker C
Absolutely not. That has been the best day of our life.
Speaker A
And this campaign was organized by Brother Andrew, you say?
Speaker C
Yes, yes.
Speaker A
Okay. How common is evangelicalism in Albania now?
Speaker C
So it's a percentage of Christianity here, and I'm talking about evangelism is very small. But the one that are, they try to be present and to organize a lot of activities.So there are times that we come together in the main square in Tirana, but at the same time together as Christians, we travel from one city to theother and kind of organize different programs so the people can hear the message and they
Speaker A
can hear that we exist yeah and what would you say clementina are the main challenges for christians
Speaker C
in your country what are the main challenges it's the mentality and the culture here is you have to be brave to come out and say that i'm converting because you are coming out against your familyyour friends and it's something that it's in the people mind mind that you were born Muslim, why are you changing?This is for Muslim percentage, but the Catholics are stronger or harder to convert because the Catholics are present here. They have built a lot of churches and they help. Albania is a poor country so they help people financially, they have schools,so it's kind of they are trying to keep their people in different ways. Somehow, sometimes I think that they are using the poverty of the people.
Speaker A
So you say it's difficult for people to change from religion, so to say, from Muslim to Protestant or from Catholic to Protestant.This is all difficult.
Speaker C
Yes, it is difficult.
Speaker A
Well, so far about the country, let's go to the school. You started the school yourself together with your husband, Dini. What was your motivation?
Speaker C
Before my husband and I went to the United States, I was a principal of a school. And at the same time, and it was a public school, was a school for the gifted. At the same time, I was teaching Sunday school. What happened duringthat time, we had 50 kids attending the Sunday school for children. But then after they finished the eighth grade, they disappeared. And the problem was that the Turkish started to build a lot of schools for muslims the turkish the turkish yesthey still have a lot of schools here okay they were investing in big buildings um and different cities so the but it was a good school putting the kids there and after that, they wouldnot come back to the church. So, and because I was connected with school and Sunday school at church, I always told my husband then I said, one day, if we will get rich,then this is what I want to do. I want to start a Christian school.
Speaker A
Okay. And did you become rich?
Speaker C
I did. All right. Yes. it's not financially okay but spiritually yes i did yeah and i'm telling you the story is uh we moved to the states with with two thousand dollars
Speaker A
for how long did you did you did you stay in the states 12 years 12 years okay so we moved to
Speaker C
two thousand dollars and when we said goodbye to our, we thought that we'll never see them because financially we all were poor. And I got the job the first day that I arrived in the States.It was a summer camp. It was a Christian private school. And so I started to work there as a teacher after school program and do a lot of work.Then I realized the opportunity of going back to school. I always dreamed to continue my education and the government did not allow me to go furtherbecause of my political situation with my family. So as I was going to, I finished my bachelor, I went in my master and when I graduated,I was working on my professional project and I saw the topics. And one of the topics there was how to start a Christian school.
Speaker A
How to start a Christian school. Okay.
Speaker C
So I talked to my mentor and I said, hey, is it possible that I can choose this one? Immediately he said, oh, yes, I have helped a lot of people here starting Christian schools in the US.And I said, now I want to start a Christian school in Albania.
Speaker A
Albania, yeah.
Speaker C
So we started to work together, and this is where God gave me the vision that you need to go back and start a Christian school. I shared my dream, my vision with people that we were friends,from the church, from different agencies. And for seven years, we'll meet together and discuss it. And after seven years, the group that supported us originally decided that,okay, let's move back. We came here. We did not have issues to be accepted in the country.actually we got the license in two three months and everybody has sold out that you will never get the license and was it in
Speaker A
Leysia already then was it in Leysia and is that the place where you where you
Speaker C
where you come from yes I was married in Leysia and Leysia treated me very well so basically I wanted to give back to Leusia because the way that they adoptedme I came from the south of the north.
Speaker A
And when did you come back from the States to Leusia?
Speaker C
We moved to the States in 1999 and we moved back to Leusia in 2011 with seven students.
Speaker A
Seven students. Okay.
Speaker C
Yeah. This is how we started. And we have 220 students today.
Speaker A
And is it still growing or have you been...
Speaker C
Every year we get more. Actually this year we were growing so fast the building that we are renting could not get more students.So we are adding five portable classrooms in our courtyard to accommodate more students. Yes. People want to be
Speaker A
part of our school. Yeah. You said, well, you come from Lesia, but would it not have been better
Speaker C
to have such a Christian school in the capital Tirana? Having a Christian school in Albania for me was to use the school as a tool to reacheducation. I see education as a door to reach the people, to bring people to God. Yeah. And all the missionaries go to Tirana because it's the capital, the life is better.You have a lot of opportunities if you have children. But as you go up to the north, you don't find a lot of missionaries. So my children and us, we prayed a lot. And our son said to us, if you will go onmission, you have to do mission where there is nobody. And we decided to do that. A lot of people, even the Ministry of Education of that time asked us to go in Tirana. god told us that we need to be here yeah yeah what what what what age groupsuh do you serve there at your school uh as i mentioned before i was thinking to start high school because this is where i saw the switch from the children to go from the church centerschool churches to go to the muslim colleges They call them colleges, but basically they are high schools. So we started with 10th grade, but then very soon I realized that it was a lot of workwith these 10th graders to teach them English, to teach them knowledge, to shape them, behave. They were really, really bad. Yeah, how old are the 10th grade? Is that 14, 15?Yeah, 15, 14, 15. So then I thought that if we go down, if we start from the first grade, then it's kind of we raise these kids to death by ourselves. We shape them. We teach them God'svalues from the beginning. So the third year, we got the second license and now we have first grade or 12. okay yes and if i would
Speaker A
send my children to your school what would be the difference with the public school right it's a lot
Speaker C
it's the way that we teach the methods that we use an exclusive on other private schools here use i call it russian style russian style that's this is how i call it and the reason thati call it that way is it's lecturing a lot of people call it lecturing but i call it russian style because we borrowed this style from them and that style is the teacher is in the centerso what happens the teachers come in front of the students and talks and talks and talks and the next day the student have to respond the same way. They just memorize it. No critical thinking, no problem solving.So for us, the blocks are longer and the students are in the center. We focus a lot on teaching them how to think and how to solve problems.But if you ask our students, why do you like this school? They all said it's safe and secure and we feel loved and cared. So it's not just a school to teach knowledge. It's a family. It's notan institution. It's a family. It's a community where we learn together and grow together
Speaker A
and do a lot of things together. So it's not Russian style teacher-centered, but more pupil-centered?
Speaker C
Yes. How would you call it? I would call it now hands-on style now.
Speaker A
Hands-on style. Okay. So that's a difference in method, but that's not what makes your school
Speaker C
Christian, is it? So there must be more. Right. Oh, absolutely. On the Christian perspective, we don't get students that come from Christian family because that's why we are here. So, but as soon as you walk inour school, you can feel it. We have Bible verses everywhere. It's a beautiful environment, very, very attractive, very comfortable, clean. When you walk in our school, you find all the staff and teachers smile, welcome you,and share immediately with a lot. So that's the first feelings. When the parents and students come for interview here, immediately they can see the difference, the communication,the truthfulness. And when they become our students, we teach them to replace revenge, that is very common, especially on the north, revenge with love.
Speaker A
Revenge with love.
Speaker C
Right.
Speaker A
So there is a different atmosphere in your school.
Speaker C
Absolutely. The teachers, if you go to public schools, they raise the voice, they even can hit them sometimes, not here. And do you teach any Bible stories or devotions?
Speaker A
Do you have devotions?
Speaker C
Right, we do. We call them chapel, and we have chapel every other week. And we have three groups, elementary, junior high, and high school. The other thing that we do every Monday,we have a new verse of the week from the Bible. And every day, the first 10 minutes, we spend time about what does it mean. It's kind of Bible study but in a different way. Students give their opinion in how we connect thiswith our daily life, how can this verse affect us. On Sunday, my husband is the pastor, so let me put it this way.The school and the church are two different institutions, but they were very, very close together. So all the teachers, all the faculty and staffare part of the church. We attend the church. The students, every level, we call it first grade recognition, second grade recognition.So every month we have a group of students, and the parents are invited there, and they give a concert. They praise God. They worship God. We have Bibles for the kids.If you come here, you'll see them everywhere. So it's kind of we are teaching Bible, but not on traditional style. And the reason that we don't teach it on traditional style is because I don't have a teacher to teach Bible.Because there's not such an institution here that can give the people a diploma that allowed us to hire. The first years where we started, I had some American teachers.and during that timewe did have the Bible class. We started, we have a Bible club. So on Friday I have an expat, a teacher that, and an Albanian teachertogether, they have it. Other things that we do to teach them about Bible and God, we teach them through what we do, through our actions. So in our school every year we get,we accept Roma children. Roma children. Right. Roma children is, it's a group of people here that are looked down. They don't go to school. It's like they live in ghetto. They beg. So we getstudents from this, this population. And for for me these are the heroes because this is the best school i would say and they go from this environment that is warm or and clean they go to
Speaker A
the ghetto but they come every day so how many roma pupils do you have on the 12th okay i get year because we finance them 100%. We feed them, we buy uniform, we buy them clothes,
Speaker C
books, book bags, everything.
Speaker A
Speaking about finances, Clementina, no school can go without. Where do you get your money
Speaker C
from? Tuition, part of it. It's probably 60% of it.
Speaker A
60%? Okay, from the parents.
Speaker C
From the parents. And then we fundraise I fundraise okay yes I fundraise in Canada I fundraise in US Germany is very helpful for us we are trying to expand thefundraising in Europe for example right now we purchased the portable classrooms and I borrowed money so I'll go I will send a letter to Europeand everywhere to people that I know if they can fundraise Albania is not a country that
Speaker A
accepts the fundraising it's a different mentality okay do you not get money from Tirana, from the state?
Speaker C
We do not get any money. All the other students in other schools get the textbooks for free, not us.
Speaker A
Right. So you are completely on your own.
Speaker C
We are completely on our own. Whatever we do, we have to depend on ourselves and fundraising.
Speaker A
Yeah. And then the schools inspection. Sometimes the government sends inspectors also to independent
Speaker C
schools how's that in Albania they do they do every year sometimes twice a year there are different kind of inspections I have to tell you thatthere is a performance card we call it it's kind of the ranking of the schools here we have been school number one for the last eight years.
Speaker A
School number one.
Speaker C
Right. The best school in the area, in the region.
Speaker A
The best school in the region.
Speaker C
Yes.
Speaker A
Well, that's something to be very proud on, isn't it?
Speaker C
We are. We are. And I talked about the Roma. We have project our students once a week, they go to a center with students with disability and they go and helpthem and we have after-school program with kids from the Roma community that they do homework or we teach them how to read and write but at the same time wework with all the parents of our children some others and teach them skills for life like how to take shower, hygiene and all this, but also to read and write.And this is not just to help them. It's to help our students to share God's love with the others. So there are many elements that have put us on the first spotnot only academically, but other things as well. The government tests all the students at the end of the school year, every year, and our students do really, really well.
Speaker A
Yeah, number one, yes. But also the number one, the best school has challenges. What would you say is the main challenge for your school?
Speaker C
So, I would say that the main challenge is finance.
Speaker A
Okay, finance.
Speaker C
Because we don't have any rights. Because we are so present and so involved in community, our relationship with the local government is very, very close.So we feel very supported on that side, but no finance support. So I think the challenge is the finance. Because if we want to build,we are renting the place. So more students, more children of Albania will attend our school, then we need more money.Because I'm not American, I'm not German, I am not any other nationality other than Albania. So my friends, my family are here, but the mentality of fundraising does not exist in countries like Albania. I would say the Eastern European countries.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker C
I think the finance is the biggest challenge for us.
Speaker A
There are also international networks of Christian schools.
Speaker C
Do you belong to any of those networks we do we do we are we are considered the mennonite so we are part of the mennonite schools network in u.s in canada we are part of acsiinternational it's here in europe we are part of the network of the private schools here in the country we have a lot of partnership with different networks like in Germany, there are schools in that mode that we have built relationship with them since the beginning.And I think that my participation in the Brussels meeting has connected me with other networks.
Speaker A
The Brussels considerations.
Speaker C
Yes, that, yes. And we just started to talk to a network in Netherlands. So, yes, a lot of windows are open for us to connect with other Christian schools orother networks. And this is good because if I need something or help, how do you handle this situation then i have a brother or
Speaker A
sister school that i can turn around yeah yeah yeah clementina we come to an end uh my closing question would be uh well what's your biggest concern what's keeping you awake during the night
Speaker C
when i moved here my dream was that our school to be a light in the community in the community to be a light in the country and my dream was that uh to have at least three schools one in the center of albania one inthe south and we we are in the when all the other schools are facing challengeswith the number of the students, as I'm speaking, I have 47 students on waiting lists.
Speaker A
Waiting lists, okay.
Speaker C
So these are challenges. And of course, together with this, it's a lot of opportunities to expose the students to different international conferences.Like this year, we are going to, we are sending our students for the first time in Budapest. ACSI is organizing a conference for leadership.So it's kind of, it's always about the money.
Speaker A
Yeah, always about money. Always about the money. Yep, always about money.
Speaker C
Always about the money. So I always said if I would have money, this is what I would do. Albanian children need to be exposed and to see the truth so they can take over the country and lead it.So our students go in different countries to study,and we have very, very successful students in Canada, US, England, Netherlands, different countries in Europe.So they are smart, they have the potential, but they don't have the opportunity to get the right education when they are here because we cannot accept more than what we have.
Speaker A
Thank you very much, Clementina, founder of the Christian School in Legia, Albania. And thank you for listening to this podcast from Christian Network Europe. Please come to cne.news for moreof this in articles and newsletters or download our app. And don't forget to sign up for this podcast to hear us again next week. Thank you very much.