LGBT Outreach In Albania - A Grassroots Grant Project

The Outreach Team! All smiles as we celebrate the conclusion of our project.

LGBT Outreach - A Peace Corps Grant (SPA) Partnership Project

Overall, the grant went well. We worked in partnership with representatives from two NGOs and visited areas outside of Tirana to give high-school students, university students and other community members the opportunity to meet an LGBT person face-to-face and to ask them questions. We also ended up using the SkaNdal documentary as a tool to ease them into the subject matter. This proved highly-effective, and in hindsight, a prudent measure in some more isolated areas. 

Xheni explaining a group activity at our session in port city of Durres.

We successfully reached out to more than 250 individuals across 13 communities outside of Tirana and educated participants on LGBT issues in Albania. We worked with two NGOs to organize each outreach session in partnership with local Peace Corps Volunteers. We also met with potential community leaders during each session to build a more sustainable network of contacts for our NGO partners.

Hanging out after a fun informal discussion. Many girls reported knowing a gay person in their community!

Our initial objective had not changed much from our plan. We had some variation with regards to the level of LGBT awareness among our participants, thus we had to make adjustments to our presentation as went along. Through close collaboration with the Peace Corps volunteers, we were able to appropriately gauge the audience and cater the presentation accordingly. For example, some communities had already been aware of LGBT issues, thus we focused mainly on discussion and critical thinking topics relating to human rights and society. For those groups who were less aware of such issues prior to our visit, we decided to show the documentary and allow the audience space to ask basic questions before we presented. 

A community partner holding up a drawing from an activity - "Draw a Lesbian or Gay Man"

The community feeling was usually very positive. We had some instanced where the participants had stated some concern or reservations about the subject matter. For example, in Saranda, there was one woman who had religious beliefs that did not allow for LGBT acceptance. She stated that she didn’t have any personal feelings about it, but that she couldn’t accept it because of her religion. The presenters responded by thanking her for her honesty, and for her respect by attending the session and for voicing her opinion. Again, we re-iterated that our goal was simply to present the information and allow them to form their opinions themselves. That particular participant ended up spending more time interacting with the speakers after the session and even took a photo, smiling with them afterwards. We have experience this type of understanding several times throughout this project. Even if people had objections to LGBT people, they were still open to learning about this issue, and showed appreciation our outreach efforts. 

The girls from the GLOW National Conference were among the brightest, most considerate we have met in Albania

Through the strengthening of their outreach network, the NGOs increased their capacities. Each engagement was an opportunity for them to meet other Albanian community members and service providers across the country. Through debrief sessions after each engagement, partnering NGOs gained valuable perspective from the input of participants, Peace Corps volunteer liaisons and the local hosting service provider. Peace Corps volunteers provided feedback on outreach methods and presentation material, thus allowing for more successful engagements. Throughout this grant period, PC Volunteers also worked directly with directors of the partnering NGOs to discuss fundraising strategies as well as outreach methods for events and promotion. 

Participants in Lezha re-evaluating stereotypes through a critical thinking exercise

The network built throughout this grant will allow the NGOs to do outreach through such contacts, with less need for Peace Corps volunteer coordination. With these communities now engaged and primed with these initial visits, future engagement will be easier and thus have more chance at being successful. Also, the skills build by members of the NGO (both experiential and technical) will set them up for better outreach moving forward.

A group photo after our session in Elbasan. We had a great discussion going, with some very interesting questions.

Kristi, Xheni and Gene sharing their wisdom and answering questions in the northern town of Kukes

The response was a lot more positive than initially expected. Event participants were a lot more welcoming of the subject matter and a lot more engaging than the NGOs had anticipated. The NGOs were quite impressed by the level of progressive attitudes among their fellow Albanians. There were a couple participants who were not enthusiastic about the topics, but due to our strategy to only engage interested parties, such interactions were not very common at all, and every time one came up, it was discussed and resolved during the sessions. We left every session with a good impression and on good terms with both event organizers and participants. After receiving feedback from one session held in Durres with the GLOW group, we heard that one parent was concerned with the subject matter presented to their daughter and that they disagreed with such education due to their religious beliefs. 

Outreach often means sharing personal experiences. For me that meant 'coming out' to each audience.

Recommendations include continuing such collaborative efforts. Peace Corps volunteers should continue to welcome Aleanca and ProLGBT into their communities. Although the general impression of LGBT issues in Albania is that such awareness and acceptance does not exist, we have seen quite the opposite reaction from the majority of our participants. 

Alba fielding questions from the audience and Gene explaining what it means to be an Ally.

 

Further efforts should be made to work with the NGOs on an organizational capacity basis, supporting their existing efforts, in partnership with host country leadership. The efforts of the government of Albania align well with the goals of the NGOs, thus Peace Corps support of these efforts to move towards EU acceptance should be provided in some form.

Lessons Learned and Promising Practices

Post-session selfie with the fabulous girls from Korce!

We learned that it is better to engage interested groups rather than trying to fit a lot of people into a session. The response is usually better when we have the chance to sit and engage with each person in some way one on one. We also found that it is always a good idea to allow them to ask questions anonymously, as most are too shy to ask it out loud. We did this in several communities and got a better response than asking out to the group as a whole. We of course used the SkaNdal documentary to ease participants into the subject matter. We feel that as the LGBT rights movement progresses, future documentaries should be screened to keep communities informed. 

Smaller groups proved to be among the best engagements we had. This one in Berat was truly special.

Lastly, face to face interaction is everything. We have found that if someone has had a positive interaction with an LGBT person, that this is enough for them to accept LGBT people in their life. Thus we tried our best to be respectful of different and even opposing opinions, leaving each session as ‘friends’ with our audience. The most important thing here was leaving with a good impression.

Larger groups allowed us to reach out to a wider audience. Many thanks to our teacher partners!