TIRANA – Seated at a conference table in the offices of Different & Equal (D&E), a shelter for trafficked girls and women, Marjana Meshi describes the frontlines of two battles – keeping her shelter financially viable through donor funding and technical savvy while never losing sight of its primary goal, to help reintegrate victims of human trafficking into Albanian society.
Meshi is among an energetic cadre of non-governmental organizations that are helping to combat the scourge of human trafficking that has gripped post-communist Albania. Traffickers prey on unsuspecting girls and young women seeking better lives, though empty promises and lead them into lives of prostitution.
To be sure, the struggle is hardly over, but progress has been achieved through USAID’s anti-trafficking project, The Albanian Initiative: Coordinated Action Against Human Trafficking (CAAHT).
Since it began in 2004, USAID has given more than $2 million in grants to help provide organizations like D&E a greater ability to combat human trafficking through strengthening their administrative capacity— with an eye toward ensuring sustainability after CAAHT project ends.
Like many of her colleagues who lead young social services agencies, Meshi is a former social worker who confronted the various challenges of leading an NGO without first having acquired the necessary technical skills.
“Becoming a manager was very different,” Meshi said of her abrupt move from shelter counselor to executive director of D&E. “It’s a big responsibility, hard work. There are many principles that must be established and upheld. I have always to be on top of everything – emotionally and intellectually.”
The directors, staff and volunteers of these agencies often have practical experience as social workers or educators, but are not experienced in how to manage not-for-profit organizations. Most lack the organizational capacity, technical skills and mission focus to be sustainable.
Since D&E began in 2004, M eshi has worked to secure funding to keep the shelter’s doors open and oversee all projects. She also advises staff on difficult cases and works closely with the shelter’s primary social worker who monitors daily activities.
D&E’s administrative offices are separated from the shelter’s location, which is not publicized for the safety and well-being of trafficking victims. Even victims’ families don’t know the location. They meet their loved ones at a café or some other location when they visit.
Meshi also owes much of D&E’s success to another CAAHT grantee known as the Albanian National Training and Technical Assistance Resource Center, or ANTTARC, established in 1998. It provides assistance to agencies like D&E and others to help them establish strategic plans to help ensure their sustainability after donor funding ends.
“We saw changes in every organization that we worked with, because formerly their capacity building efforts were sporadic,” said Myftar Doçi, ANTTARC’s program director.
ANTTARC ‘s Albanian staff conduct assessments that consider an agency’s staffing, services, counselors and available resources. On-site mentoring is provided to NGO directors and their staffs to help with project implementation, internal operating systems, policies and procedures.
“ANTTARC’s intervention was very important and necessary. They were experts at strategic planning and management. They assisted us in improving our organization, even in designing job descriptions and evaluation forms for staff,” Meshi said. “ ANTTARC’s technical assistance included help with proposal writing in the search for other funding sources and helped us create our by-laws.”
The CAAHT program is changing attitudes as well as building organizational capacity. The experiences, like those of D&E, have been shared by over a dozen other CAAHT grantee organizations across the country.
One grantee representative observed “ I value the sharing of information and ideas, capacity building, the new working spirit (that reflects an openness and cooperation between different sectors and NGOs working to combat trafficking), and the use of resources. ANTTARC has been willing to provide information on anything it is asked to. Such positive experiences have made us behave in the same way.”
