BBA short story

Beyond Barriers Association (hereinafter BBA) was created in June 2004 with the initiative of a group of youngsters with and without a disability. BBA is a non-profit, non-governmental and voluntary based organization that defends the rights and the interests of the young people. The mission of BBA is to promote equal opportunities for all youngsters, especially for those with social disadvantages and different abilities, by offering them support to get empowered and be an active part of the community’s life. Our final goal is to integrate the youngsters with social problems and disadvantages in the life of the society.

Achievements and expertise:

BBA is experienced in non-formal education, providing training and learning opportunities for young people, running voluntary programs in local and international level, as well as in the implementation of bigger scale project in partnership with organizations and networks and/or partners all across Europe. BBA has realized around 100 trainings with more than 3500 young people as beneficiaries. At the same time, from 2011 BBA works with High Schools and Universities of Tirana, where information about participation, inclusion, and volunteering, European citizenship is offered to youngster through the non- formal education approach. This program reaches with information more than 3000 students and pupils each year, making a total of 15.000 beneficiaries for the last 5 years. From 2014 BBA, started working with employability skills for young people through different local, national and international initiatives. The most recent and long-term is the YOUSEE project, in cooperation with ADP-ZID (MNE) as the Lead partner and partners from Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Turkey.

Cooperation on national/local level

BBA has a large network of partners, comprising of NGOs working in and outside the country, public institutions, other youth organizations; formal and informal networks of young people. During the last 5 years, BBA has hosted more than 150 EVS volunteers, sent about 50 Albanian youngsters abroad on EVS and as well as each year about 200 local volunteers working in the disability institutions through the Local Volunteer Service program.