Humanitarian Assistance to Covid-19 Disaster Affected Communities in Kruja Municipality in Albania

July 2020 – June 2021

After the first positive-tested cases were made public in March, the Albanian government immediately took extensive measures to tackle the surge. These measures posed unimagined challenges to Albania’s social and education system as a whole. The Government reacted to the persistent threat by imposing comprehensive curfews which enforced de-facto isolation of all families.
Students’ education had been already affected by the shutdown of the schools, due to the consequence of the 6,4 magnitude earthquake of November 2019. Now, with the spread of Covid-19, it has been challenged again. Indeed, children were asked to access the formal school program via an online platform. However, in doing so, the circumstances of those children living in suburban areas, who do not have access to the internet or computers, were not taken into consideration.
Therefore, children who have learning difficulties are among the most vulnerable category to drop out of school.

ADRA Albania has decided to intervene with this project to provide better educational opportunities for people in disaster recovery by encouraging children from poor families to advance in their learning and offer good life opportunities to all.
This is in line with ADRA’s global campaign to ensure that every child, everywhere completed their education as well as with the SDG 4 and National strategic plan of the Ministry of Education to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
The targeted area is the Kruja Region and the intervention will be in its 3 administrative units: Bubq, Thumana and Borizana. ADRA Albania has been active for decades in the aforementioned regions. Besides having a trustworthy relationship with the local authority, these areas are very important to target with our project since they are at risk of landslides from environmental degradation and poor governance.
In total, 1466 people are directly benefiting from the project’s activities. These comprise children, teachers, parents, CPUs / social workers, municipality workers, health centers workers and volunteers.

The designed activities will be focused on:

– Providing psychosocial support to adults and children through individual counselling sessions, group therapy sessions and innovative activities for children and adults who need assistance and show signs of trauma;
– Providing supplementary classes and extracurricular activities, complementary to the school program, in the premises of Temporary Learning centers (TLC) which will help children of the targeted areas to catch up with the formal school program;
– Organizing awareness-raising campaigns on the reconstruction of schools, education and environment protection with the close cooperation the local administrative units;
– Providing the necessary program supplies for the creation of the Temporary Learning centers (TLC) in Bubq, Thumana and Borizana villages.

Funded by ADRA International, ADRA Germany and ADRA Czech, the project is implemented and coordinated by ADRA Albania. It will run until June 30th 2021.
The project envisions a contingency plan in case of a second wave. An alternative action plan is foreseen in which the activities will be delivered remotely thus avoiding the interruption of the project.