This project aims to promote the ability and information of young people to take advantage of opportunities for employment and guidance/career orientation, making autonomous choices to reach their full potential. This approach will be developed and promoted through innovative and coherent methods, such as a dedicated web platform, trainings and internship.
National
Albania
Durres, Shkoder, Elbasan
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Civic Resistance Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Valmira Last name of representative: Kosova Gender: Female Nationality: Albania Function: Project Manager Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Street Mustafa Xhabrahimi, Tirane Town: Tirana Postal code: 1001 Country: Albania Direct Tel:+355 69 317 1548 E-mail:valmirakosova@gmail.com Website:https://qq.com.al/
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Yes
New European Bauhaus or European Commission websites
As an organization, we have always thought that young people are the most essential part of society, therefore investing time in their direction is not only a personal achievement, but also a benefit for the whole society and the country. Bearing this in mind and referring to our recent studies about the education situation in Albania, we consider the development of this project with education focus, under the Bauhaus values, as an excellent opportunity. Specifically, our initiative aims to promote the skills and well-informed young people to take advantage of opportunities for employment and career guidance, in making autonomous choices, reaching their full potential.
Our objective is to create a new cultural behavior for the young people when choosing their career path and increasing the positive mindset and emotions in their life. Taking this in consideration our project will be focused to promote high quality of information / learning / practicing etc about education system in Albania, and support the career progression of young people in this regard.
The three main elements and the methodology that will act in the realization of these objectives are interwoven with each other in a perfect way, connecting the innovative part with the practical and theoretical part. The multidimensional web platform will offer the possibility of information, navigation and orientation about student academic life and career orientation for the target groups in a qualitative way and simple to absorb. The categories designed in this aspect have a very specific direction and focus for the needs of young people in relation to education, which will be explained in detail below. At the same time, for these targeted students, but also more widely, trainings will be offered on increasing the skills and capacities for the field. This whole concept and strategy will be completed with internships in different institutions in AL, to offer them a real panorama of how the market works.
Prioritizing Education
Career orientation
Web platform
Information & Capacity building
Sustainable and positive future for young people
Starting from way that our initiative is designed, shows that it will be sustainable because it is drafted having in mind concrete challenges that students of universities and those of the last year of high schools and practical solutions that they have suggested to handle them.
Another aspect is that after the implementation period of our project will be finished, we as an organization have the right human and financial resources to maintain the web platform and to update it regularly with relevant information. We aim to expand this initiative also in other cities of Albania, so this platform will be the connecting point of other initiatives in every country that they will be implemented. The career offices will be part of this platform in terms of suggesting on how to improve it and also to update it with relevant information for the students. Periodic meeting with the career offices will take place in order to improve the containing of the platform.
Also the possibility to provide internships for 9-10 students shows a sustainable aspect of the initiative, because there is the possibility for these students to be employed after the internship and this way we will have concrete success stories of young people passing into the labor market.
Our initiative includes an online platform that will be accessible to all with no cost. It will be designed in a way to be aesthetically interesting to the audience containing career advising articles, inspiring video testimonials of successful young people in Albania, inspiring videos of VIPs, animation video tutorials on skills related to education and employment etc. From using this platform, we aim to have more skilled young people and to help them find the career path that is most adequate to their skills and to understand which career path makes them the most happy.
Through the training sessions we aim to increase the capacities of the participants in soft skills and the skills related to job searching, such as how to write a CV, how to write a motivational letter, how to deal with a job interview, how to search for a vacant job etc.
By implementing the above activities and products of our initiative, our objectives aim to have more skilled and accomplished young people in the project area and also happier, more fulfilled and mostly more motivated ones. In this way, we will achieve the main goal of our project who is in line with the value of Bauhaus concept, on building a sustainable and shapeless future.
Since the concept of career orientation and motivational sessions are rarely known among the young people in Albania, we believe that our initiative will contribute in creating a new cultural behavior among the young people before passing to the labor market and before choosing their university profile orientation.
All of the activities and the products of our initiative will be accessible to all of the target beneficiaries at no cost and at no difficulty. In order to achieve this and to be as much inclusive as possible we will have an online campaign promoting the activities and the objectives of our initiative. Besides that, also the career offices of the universities will promote the activities and products of our initiative. Through our campaign, we will make sure to promote the initiative also at marginalized groups such as LGBT, Rome and Egyptian communities, social aid families etc. In our training sessions, we will try to have at least 60% of females and representatives from marginalized groups. This is not only to include them but also to create spaces for them to share experiences with each other as well. From our informative campaign during the phase of the design of the initiative, we learnt that the previous initiatives that were implemented in these target groups were not promoted enough so most of the interested people failed on being part of them. We will make this problem of the past our "lesson learnt" and we will promote our initiative in multi channels. The difference of our initiative that makes it also sustainable is the fact that the platform will be part of the career offices after the project finishes and it will be updated regularly with related information.
Regarding the internships that will be offered during this initiative, in order to offer an equal treatment to all the interested people, an application process will take place where the hosting institutions will choose the selected candidates.
The young people of the targeted municipalities were actively involved in the design of our initiative, by being part of the consultative meetings to discuss the challenges that they face in education, access of information and passing into the labor market.
During the implementation phase, in order for the platform to be widely used, we will organize information campaigns that include informative meetings with students of high schools and universities, online campaigns in social media and local media. Since the platform is very easily accessible for all with no cost, we believe that it will have a high impact on the orientation of the youth in finding their career paths according to their skills and also to motivate them
Besides the platform, our initiative includes training sessions on raising capacities on soft skills, and the first phase of job searching such as writing a CV, motivational letter, how and where to find the employment possibilities according to their skills, information on non-standard employment channels such as freelance etc. These training will be opened to all the interested youth citizens of the targeted municipalities and they will be invited through a campaign as well, in order to be as much inclusive and accessible as possible.
Another aspect on how they will benefit from our initiative is the fact that we will select 9-10 students to provide them an internship at local/national institutions, banks, insurance companies etc.
The impact of our initiative will be high because we have designed it through close cooperation with the potential beneficiaries and the activities and products resulting from this initiative, will handle some of the concrete challenges that these beneficiaries face daily in terms of education and lack of capacities on how to pass from the education system to the labor market; the lack of career advisory tools and systems which are connected directly to the low motivation and levels of happiness of the young people
The targeted universities and high-schools in three municipalities are the local stakeholder that were engaged on the design of our initiative because through their cooperation, we have concluded the consultative campaign with the students and the career offices. The career offices are committed to have the ownership and the maintenance of the platform after this project will implement all of its activities.
We are referred also to the National Strategy of Youth for 2023, a document from the National Youth Agency of Albania, that is approved after several public consultations. On this National Strategy we have found the main challenges of the youth regarding the education and the preparation of the youth for the employment market and this has served us to make an assessment on the bullets that our initiative should include. Since the targeted points of this strategy was finding digital channels to contribute to the education and career advising of the youth, we have designed the platform in our initiative and also the training sessions.
Besides the above mentioned, we are also referred to the Youth Strategy 2030, a document prepared by the Council of Europe, that aims to raise capacities of the European youth so they can actively support, protect, promote and benefit from the values of the European Council. Since Albania is one of pre-accession countries, each initiative must rely on the EU values on the targeted area, in our case youth and education.
Our initiative includes also offering internships for 9-10 students in different local and national institutions, banks, insurance companies etc, according to their profiles, so these institutions have also supported our initiative by committing to offer these internships.
The know-how on the education area gained through our organization’s experience was the starting point of this initiative, because through our experience we have a clear vision on the lacks of the education area in our country. Besides that, given that the impact of this initiative will be in the social and economic development of the targeted groups, also the knowledge on economic and social sciences helped us to create a clearer idea on how this initiative will be implemented in order to have a considerable impact. During the programming phase of the initiative, representatives of our organization with background on social sciences and economic sciences, have conducted several consulting meeting with the career offices of the universities, in order to hear about the challenges faced on their job and also 3 consultative meetings in the form of “hearing campaigns” with university students and also with students in their last year of high schools in each of the 3 targeted municipalities to hear about their challenges and proposals on how to improve their skills on the employment market and in the same time to increase their fulfilment and happiness levels.
These meetings were highly appreciated by the students and the career offices as well, also because they not only had the chance to express the challenges faced but also they discussed the possible solutions and they contributed ideas on how this initiative should be in order for them to benefit the most from it.
Another thing that we have relied on while designing this initiative, was the EU Youth Strategy 2030. We have tried to design an initiative that contributes in improving the quality of education and information through digital tools and solutions.
On the implementation of the initiative, besides the ideas resulting from the consultative campaigns during the design of the initiative, the experience of our organization on education related projects and EU funded projects will be a strong point.
There are three things that make our initiative innovative compared to the others in the field of education and career orientation in terms of it’s design and the implementation.
First it is the fact that during the design of the initiative, representatives from the beneficiary groups have been part of the process, suggesting how this initiative will be mostly accurate and valuable for them.
Second, there is not any soft tool dedicated for students, where they can find practical information in different areas, starting with information regarding the study profiles of each university, the legislation and rules of applying, information in courses and trainings, forum/blog for students with Questions & Answers, information on vacancy jobs for students, motivational videos, success stories, quizzes on career orientation etc. Our platform will include all of the above mentioned and it will serve as a community for the students.
Another innovative aspect is the fact that it will be implemented in all 3 municipalities that have universities, because all the initiatives of this fields, have been implemented in Tirana, as the capital of Albania and the city that has more universities than the others.
Our initiative is foreseen to take place first in three municipalities, Shkodra, Elbasani and Durresi. We have selected these three municipalities because there are universities there and because most of the projects related to youth, education and employment have been implemented in Tirana, which is the capital.
Given that our initiative is adequate and will have an impact not only to the university students but also to the high school students as well, we believe that it could be expanded in every city of Albania in the future.
Our organization will commit to expand this initiative in other cities in the future in terms of the access to the online platform and the organization of the training sessions to raise the capacities of the young people. We believe that the methodology and the instruments used in this initiative could offer benefits to the young citizens in every city because they will contribute not only in increasing the capacities of young people but also in helping them to discover their skills and what career path is most suitable to their skills and in the same time what makes them happy. They will be inspired through success stories that will be published through our initiative as well.
Taking in consideration some key elements in our initiative, we have use a mixed approach or methodology. Saying this we have tried to include in our mythology different elements that contributes in the final output for the education achievement; like web platform, trainings, and internships. We consider web platform as an innovative and a new solution for the students of universities and the ones in high school, to address their needs, concerns, lack of orientations, etc. This multidimensional platform will be linked with social media (like Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok etc) that young generation are using more and more to improve their capacities of learning and being prepared for the future market in the society. In this platform, they will find different categories, which extensive all predicted target groups, beneficiaries and stakeholders. During the first phase of the project, we have also foreseen a campaign throw social media, also physically in three High Schools (only in the last year students/high school graduates) and three Universities mentioned above for the platform promotion and all project contexts for them to be approached.
Another methodology that will be used is related to the trainings that we will provide to the last year students of high schools and the university students to increase their capacities in soft skills, on how to have a smooth pass from the educational system to the labor market and how to be oriented in a smart way to choose the right career path and internships
The mission of our organization is to improve the quality and guidance of the education level and learning in our society. In this regard, we have done so many research and findings in order to be able to contribute in changes that would improve and make better system for the education in our country. Saying this, we have navigated from year to year in the strategies implemented by the Albanian education system and by the EU objectives at national level. There is a big gap between these two, so with this project we aim to reduce it so we can improve some parts of the educational system and make it better for the students in Albania, which are the future of our social economy, labor market and every aspect of the development of our country. After considering the statistics that report a very low support from the existing career office in schools and public universities, and at the same time a lack of information in this regard, we are quite optimist that with this project we will change this numbers and will improve the career progression of school/universities education students. Changing and remodeling part of the education system as one of the main pillars of each country is a global challenge. The local solution will be found and addressed perfectly during physical trainings/sessions and some categories of the platform like Forum / Blogs in which will be discussed everything about education system and their needs (students) in order to facilitate the process of choosing the career path and their integration in the social economy of the country or future professional life . The linkages with the social media (Instagram) will also contribute with their open Q&A in achieving this global objective.
The main scope of this initiative is to bring in attention education needs of a vulnerable group, as young people can be considerate before throwing them on the big social economy market. Giving them orientation and confidence and contributing in their motivation with showing young people successes of their peers in the platform and also during training session and other young people who are already working in the place of their internship will speak already for a progress in achieving the objective of this project.
Shortages of functional career office and trainers have put the provision of high quality, inclusive and innovative education at risk. To tackle this problem, the essential work of our project educational methodology will revalue these needs and shape them right in order that all direct and indirect beneficiaries can benefit. This project will shape their way now and the future of thinking and learning, so they can benefit in terms of bringing out their real potential and the society will benefit of having more people that are professional in different fields as in the last years Albania is suffering from the lack of young professionals in vocational profiles. Statistics speaks for a higher number of application in Universities and very low number of applicants for vocational education.
Our scope is not only to have a progress and to contribute to the beneficiaries by the time of the project, but the most important to contribute in changing the cultural behavior of the young people in choosing careers that fit their skills and to contribute in increasing the level of the happiness in their lives so they can have also a positive emotional impact by choosing the right career path.
Our organization is also committed to expand this initiative also in other cities of Albania after this one will be fully implemented.
