Youth fight poverty by promoting tourism
Youth from Albania learn skills and hopefully increase the income in their area through the creation of its first ever guide for tourists.
For the first time ever the area surrounding Kurbin Area Development Programme (ADP), will have a guide for tourists; it will be called: “To better know my place”. The idea came from 30 passionate youth, members of World Vision’s youth group. Seeing lots of poverty and need in Kurbin, located in northeast Albania, the youth decided to search for a way to help. When they looked at the areas resources, they reminded of the area’s beauty and natural resources, elements that are often unknown or overlooked. They decided that one way to help their small part of the country develop and thrive is through tourism.
The guide is being developed by youth and it will be set up as a web page as well as made available through leaflets, which will be handed out to the main hotels and tourist agencies in the area. For now, it will contain photos of 24 destinations that can be visited as well as important information regarding the location and how long it takes to reach each attraction.Time after time youth will update the guide with new destinations that can be interesting for the tourists.
[Youth planning to design the guide for tourists, photo by Shkelzen Ndreca, World Vision's Economic Development project, Kurbin]
“I like the nature very much because it offers something beautiful and attractive to the tourists in each season,” says Alda, 16, one of the youth group.
To help them develop the guide, World Vision’s economic development programme organized training for the youth, where professionals taught them how to discover attractive places for tourism as well as how to define and describe the geographic locations of each attraction. In order to identify the appropriate places, the youth read books and collected information from the established families of the area and the local government. They also visited the places their own and took lots of pictures and notes.
Foremost, to inspire other teens from around Albanian to conduct similar initiatives, the youth participated on a radio program where they explained the initiative.
"We want to show to the tourists that although our city is poor, it is beautiful!” said the youth. “This way we can help our place progress,” they said, while visiting the attractive places they selected.
While taking picture of an old, historical, church of the area, Marko, 16, said: “It is our duty to discover what this place offers, because we live and belong to Kurbin. Our aim is to use all this richness and do beautiful things for the well- being of the people in our area and educate others do the same for their countries.”
Marko and his friends are more concerned with quality than speed. “We want to make something very professional, that’s why we have decided to make slow steeps,” explains Marko smiling.
The youth are working on building up the guide, which will be ready for publication during November of 2014.
The youth group of Kurbin has more than 100 members who are very passionate about helping their country. They are very active initiators. Through World Vision’s economic development, which is working on two fronts: farmers and youth, during this year, the youth have been able to take part in several activities, such as conferences, exchanges as well as trainings for skills, leadership, communications and how to make a business plans, etc.
“All of these activities are designed to give them more opportunities for employment in the future by connecting them with the labour market now”, says Shkëlzen Ndreca, World Vision’s Economic Development staff.
Before the tourism initiative, the 100 youth had done other projects, such as raising the awareness of HIV and AIDS, organizing events to clean their cities as well as restoring a school yard in a local school. Through these activities, the youth have had the opportunity to partner with teachers, churches, local government and community members to make their community a better place for children. In addition to working on the tourism guide, the group is also working on a parallel initiative, to raise awareness against smock and drugs, gender balance, environmental issues, etc.
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