Manchester Aid to Kosovo (MAK) were formed in 1999. Among other projects they've been working to build a park in the town of Podujeva in North East Kosovo. The following is an account I wrote for their website about their work their in April 2008. You can see video of the work at the park in progress via the links on the right. For more information on the charity their website can be found here.

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The industrial region of Podujeva in the north east of Kosovo does not receive many visitors. The town suffered badly during the war in the late 1990s and since then the trains have stopped running and the economy has collapsed. Unemployment is sky high and the dusty streets are full of young people with nothing to do and nowhere to go. The single mention the town gets in the only guidebook to the newly independent state is to warn travellers not to bother going there. But it’s in this unlikely destination that a group of volunteers from ‘Manchester Aid to Kosovo’ have become a familiar sight to the locals. For six years they’ve been travelling to the region with the goal of building a ‘Peace Park’ for the people of the town. It’s been a huge task that at various times has involved the cream of the Manchester music scene, troops from NATO and landscape architects from the Eden Project. And this month a group of volunteers returned to the town with the aim of taking delivery of a massive shipment of trees and plants and transforming a corner of this run-down town into a haven of peace and tranquillity.