“How I would f*** that c***,” said one middle-aged man to his friend very loudly, pointing to a young brunette passing them on an autumn evening in 2014 in Prishtina, Kosovo’s capital. With a hidden camera, she documented herself being exposed within 8 hours to about 50 harassing comments by men, while she walked alone on the streets. Eighteen-year-old Korab Jaha, who grew up in Kosovo and currently lives in Prishtina, knows that scenes like that happen every day and night in the cities of his country.
Today, Korab is the assistant manager of the Be a Man project (Klubi Bonu Burrë) by the Kosovar NGO Peer Educators Network (PEN). Founded in 2011, Be a Man works mostly with vocational schools, which normally have a high percentage of male pupils. The programme lasts eight months and consists of 24 workshops ranging from issues like drug use to sex, or equality between men and women. By today, approximately 2000 young Kosovan men have participated in the Be a Man project. Their Facebook page has nearly 20,000 fans. The Be a Man project also exists in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Albania, Montenegro, and Serbia.
“We try to provide an understanding of masculinity to young Kosovans, which differs from the rigid mainstream society’s perception of what a man should be like,” the director of PEN Bujar Fejzullahu explained. “A man does, for example, not betray his manhood if he helps his mother doing the dishes,” he added, before he gave me a sticker with one of their main slogans written on it: “be a man, without violence.”
