TIRANA, May 17/ATA/ – We remain committed to a strong partnership with Albania, our NATO ally and we will continue to support community-led efforts that provide opportunities for youth engagement and violence prevention, and help citizens to contribute to the common good, Chargé d’Affaires, US Embassy in Tirana Leyla Moses-Ones stated.
US will continue to support efforts towards domestic development, peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development,throughout Albania. The US government has provided a $ 5 million fund for the programs to prevent violent extremism in Albania. ”
With the support of the US Embassy, Institute for Democracy and Mediation (IDM) has been piloting the project “Advancing school boundaries towards resilient communities” in the municipalities of Cërrik and Peqin.
“Tomorr Sinani” and “Zihni Magani” high schools in these municipalities have embarked on the road to develop self-sustained models serving as communitive centers. Based on shared responsibilities and cooperation among educations, local government and law enforcement institutions local partnerships have developed including civil society, youth and community leaders.
Such partnerships have served to draft comprehensive annual SCC action plans, to boost interaction among the institutions and the community to address the community’ concerns, to establish and encourage youth-led initiatives, sport and arts clubs, to increase vocational educational opportunities, to support families to engage in the school’s decision-making and activities.
Albania’s C/PVE efforts rely on a number of contextual advantages such as the religious tolerance as a highly respected societal value and tradition, the effective cooperation between the state and religious communities, the respect for religious freedom and so on, just to name a few. As foreseen in National Strategy against Violent Extremism”, the regulatory framework for “schools as community centers” (SCC), represents another effective advantage for PVE efforts which is instrumental for building community resilience through multi stakeholders partnerships at the local level. This approach helps to address all forms of violent extremism (religious and non-religions drivers) of violent extremism in Albania.//a.i/
