Plan ends 14 years in Albania

Sometimes “goodbye” is good news.

In June 2008, one year ago this month, Plan finished transferring operations in Albania to Qendra Femijet Sot (QFS), a local NGO launched in 2007.

For Plan, saying good-bye means that the health, education and livelihood indicators in Albania are much higher than when we began working there over a decade ago. In fact, over the last nine years, Plan Albania has contributed to cutting child mortality rates in half and increasing adult literacy rates to 99 percent (Source: CIA World Factbook).

Altogether, Plan, the Albanian Government and local community leaders decided that the communities in which we worked had achieved the infrastructure and tools to address the causes of poverty on their own. The final step, before we officially "phased-out," was successfully transferring operations to Qendra Femijet Sot, the organization that would take over providing local support for children and families in the 168 previously Plan-supported communities while they took charge of their own development.

QFS will now continue the program work and begin raising funds locally. Plan is proud of playing a pivotal role in the sustained improvement of living conditions for children in Albania.

Dr. Lisen Bashkurti, QFS Chairman, said of the transition: “This is an important milestone for child-centered development in our country. We are pleased to have such an opportunity to contribute to the present and the future of Albania.”

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