I have been a student for the biggest part of my life and what I better know in my live are the

desks, green blackboards and white uniforms of my teachers. I have sat every day 8 hours listening to
people who thought they had something to give with me .Now when I have to make a decision I see
back to my future to all the persons who contributed to make me what I am and somewhere I see my
high school the place I thought was made to destruct me but which in deed made me a better person.

I see everyday my mother who prays god for people to have tooth decay I see millionaire’s sons
compete with latest fashion cars in front of my house and I see peoples gathering Pepsi cans from public
garbage who bet on them. We need money and we pray for it, most of us work hard to get a living to
buy e new car or to send the child in a good school. Yet we don’t understand profit coming from
hardworking man who they bested to achieve what they are today. Each of us knows that profit is
strongly related with big companies and those we are taking just drops of this profit in order to keep
ourselves alive. We have always talked about bees how they are organized how they obey to the queen
and many things like this learned in 5th class of biology and we were never told the best thing about
them: they don’t have feelings, ethical standards or other aims. But what can we do? The big mistake is
done and now the queens have to think about ways to distribute the honey to bees so they don’t get to
irritated and leave the hive because they weren’t free enough or because they were workers instead of
nectar collectors. I have to stop with this analogy when my mother says me to hop from bed and to go
to school where things are a bit different from the rest of the world.

Why do we complain mostly? We complain about our boss and about high prices. We want to
be respected and this is why we hate the fact we are paid so less and why we take so few for an hour of
work. When I we go to supermarket and see numerous product with bitter prices upon them we are
going to think 1 hour of work equal 1 toothpaste (the average payment in Albania is 2.5$ per hour) and
then we go back to work and see our boss and we think:” He is paying me 1 toothpaste per hour”. This
insults our short term dignity but what is really threatened is our long term dignity which has to do with
our position in universe. Will our children be proud for our job, will our position influence other people
lives for good. We want to have a decent living and we want to show our grandsons the great things we
did when we were young. Our society is leading us only to a materialistic way of thinking and each of us
needs to know the importance of spiritual values underestimated after Middle Ages. This need has to be
built in almost every institution but firstly it has to be established in education institutes.

I am a small and a very unimportant part of Gulistan foundation, an organization that started its
activity 40 years before in Izmir, a city in southern Turkey. All they had was thought and the desire to
change the world. The spiritual lider, Fethulah Gulen had an original idea of changing the image of the
non understandable system of the global village. But to do this he first needed to change the image of
his religion and the image of his country. Mosques hadn’t serve the people to develop themselves so to
get the full understandment of the highest form of energy was needed education. Firstly what was
thought as an philosophical-spiritualistic movement started to take shape and now there are
hundredths institutions in more than 100 countries that work on the basic scheme of local economic
contribution and in the same time on increasing the global education level.
 Gulistan institution aims to reduce the level of poverty and ignorance and in the same time tries
to create an intercultural experience with these countries. The lessons and teachers are the same in all
115 countries but the communication between the school and the community changes from one
country to another. Many of my teachers practice their religion but they never declare this. The
purpose of this institution is not to introduce religion as a set of norms, but to bring up students
according to universal moral standards.

In a place where the level of poverty is high and the desire to take a good education has been
inherited by our Russian system of education the demand has created low price private school with
badly educated teachers who make all children look like geniuses with their A grades. It seems
impossible to operate in a no standardized market where you have to be inflicted with the government
in order to succeed .The only reason why in Albania exist Turkish colleges is a total coincidence. It
started as an intercultural initiative to send 150 students in turkey .Facing the demand to be educated in
Turkey some investitures thought it was better to make a Turkish college in Albania. In first 33 years all
students who succeeded in entrance exam had full tuition. After 3 years of activity the need for a school
who educated students in English was more presents even in some other cities of Albania. I couldn’t
believe when the director of a Turkish school in Shkoder told me that the school was made from the
insistence of a citizen from Shkoder who created “The society of Shkoder Turkish college
establishment”. The head of this society collected the signs from the other Shkoder citizens to build the
school. The need for such a school then was understood and the school was established in a short time.

Every company has a vision they make monthly plans, annual plans etc. but hardly any
company has a vision about the future or about the indication the product will have in society. Most of
the companies philosophy can be subscribed with 3 word “love the product “or better say ”love the
income from that product”. We are so obsessed in the material side of the world that we hardly precept
the world in another way and this is because we are learnt this way. When I was in 3 rd grade my teacher
found it very difficult to talk about our dreams and hopes and about loving each other. We used to
giggle when we heard the “l word “ so my teacher decided to stop talking us about love so she took a big
book of math and decided to make us geniuses by leaving us ignorant in ways I never thought .I learned
how to divide 3 apples to one hundred people but I didn’t learned to give my love, my hope and my
dreams to at least two. So what fethulah gulen understood is that we need more people who give love,
faith and hope than people who create only in order to sell. The whole principle of profit is based in a
strong image of a better world. It might sound utopist, childish or crazy but it serves to the community
by creating a circle of investments which remains inside the same country. My school where I study and
live was the first institution of the gulistan institution. But since then in Albania are build 5 other high
schools, 2 secondary schools and one university with a campus in rest ruction. I asked one day the
headmaster of the school “what are you going to do next teacher” .He told me that they were going to
make labs for research and maybe a hospital. I laughed .And he said me you better not laugh we are
making your country a better place you shouldn’t laugh you should work harder than me to tell me that
you can do better than I do. And I stopped laughing.

In Albania like in almost every country the income distribution differ from a region to
another. When studding the market a company must understand the amount of income .For almost 3
years I thought it was unfair that we had to pay less than the students of the Shkoder College and in the
same time I thought that because I paid less than the students of a Turkish college in the same city as my
school. But when I asked some of my friend in these schools they said they had some of my teachers and
they had some of my teachers the classes were the same and the same can be said for the playground
or dormitory. With the same quality the Turkish colleges demand different payment according to
regions. Torgut Ozal College for example has students who live in Tirana and therefore their economic
possibilities are higher than those of the others. My school which is a girl college has X payment while
the Turkish college in Shkoder has a payment of Y. This is because the northern region of Albania is
poorer than the others regions but is a fatal coincidence that this region has been known for talented
students in applied sciences and in literature. Some might think this as an normal request demand rule
but we must remember that the need for an elite school was so big that it made a hole city sign for the
construction of such a school and what really needs being emphasize id that the quality is almost the
same. An all Turkish college you see the same infrastructure, same teachers being circulated and even
the uniforms and the paint of the walls is the same.

We are very familiar with name of brands and with names of monopolist firms. We even have
started to know their owners and their melodramatic lives. These companies are all very concentrated
on their product and in their hit logos and they are sure that whatever happens they are going to make
money even if this means to leave millions unemployed. They are so busy to make partnerships based in
other principles rather than profits. Once I heard a friend of mine who had gone for a visit to a Turkish
college in England saying very irritated:”Turks will overtake the world.”I was latter asking myself is this
really a bad thing. 2008 was the start of a financial breakdown and the 2010 is being the peak of the
economical crisis and an obscure financial time. Even though everybody tries to maintain his assets, 8
businessmen from Bursa (a city in turkey) found the ways to renovate my school. In the moment I am
speaking Gulistan foundation is building the biggest campus in Albania to welcome prospective students.
The campus itself is being built by some another investitures who took 150 million dollars credit in order
to make this idea become a reality. The biggest capital of this company are partnerships and the strong
bounds made with every student or every persons who contributes in this system .Creating a global net
of idealistic people who are always there contributing to soothe effects of crises gives each of us the
idea of a less evil world where some people want us to keep our jobs, to be educated and who really
believe on the big image of a better world.

We got used with big companies who win a lot of money in some sweatshops in southern
east of Asia but the fact that we got used doesn’t mean that this is the way to continue building our
system. I believe that it is better for us to be invaded from a company who respects human values and
wants the society to develop intellectually and morally. If we want to respect morality of profit we must
first respect human capital by giving it potential, hopes and opportunities. We just need to think that
things are not as they look ,we can always change them for better.