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First round of Awareness Raising Campaign in the Framework of Regional Development and Cohesion Reform in Albania successfully finalized!

First round of Awareness Raising Campaign in the Framework of Regional Development and Cohesion Reform in Albania successfully finalized!

20.04.2021

The Albanian Development Fund (ADF) and the Deputy Prime Minister Office with the support of RDPA, during December 2020 – April 2021 held a round of 26 awareness meetings in the 12 Qarks in all 4 Development Regions of the country. During this consultation round, 183 institutional and non-institutional actors were part of roundtables discussing Regional Development Policy objectives, needs and challenges of local and regional communities towards regional development etc.

The meetings took place at the ADF headquarters and at the ADF qark offices in Vlora and Korça (for the respective qarks and in Gjirokastra with the actors of this qark. In compliance with the guidelines for preventing the spread of COVID-19 meetings in these qarks were organized in 2 or more sessions.

Beside the participation of the actors’ part of the roundtable, the meetings were attended with great interest by the representatives of the 3 Associations’ for Local Government through the ZOOM platform.

Based on the concept, model and system that enabled the implementation of the RD proposed in the Law no. 102/2020 ‘On regional development and cohesion’, the actors in the meetings discussed the key processes that the further implementation of the reform will follow, their essential role in the regional monitoring boards as well as their concerns and needs for properly implementation of the following reform.

Some notes and highlights from the discussions:

  • There’s a crucial need for awareness rising processes in terms of partnership, cooperation between actors involved in any development process. A shift in mentality for working together and creating synergies is much important for each Development Region.
  • The actors involved in the discussion highlighted the importance of all actors coming together in the regional boards to discuss and decide on the development pillars for the region, so better synergies between actors will be received.
  • Equal representation in the regional boards of all Local Government Units and also the need to collaborate with other institutional actors.
  • There’s an emergent need for stronger cooperation between academic institutions (university + vocational school) and business actors.
  • Addressing disparities within the Qarks and to a greater extent in the Regions should be a priority of RD reform.
  • Synergy and partnership created between actors in the regional boards is the key to having more developed regions in the future.

Following this round of consultation, other meetings are foreseen to take place with institutional and non-institutional actors to discuss in more details the system that will enable the implementation of regional development policy.