Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama at the meeting with high school pupils and students under 30, winners of the government program “I too have a dream 2015”:
Thank you very much,
This is an important moment in this common journey of ours because it is the moment we go to the next stage where the project will be prepared professionally, and then there is the third stage when the project will be put into effect.
What is important is that you have been proclaimed winners, and as a consequence all your projects will be put into effect.
On the other hand, I want to let you know that this is not only about individual projects. There is also another project, on which we will start working jointly and for which we will seek assistance of both the Andis, that of Andi from Civil Society and of the other Andi who supports Civil Society. What I want us to accomplish with this project, within the project of each of you, is that all of you will be in the end a team ready to help make your experience, which started with the expression of a wish on the Internet and goes throughout the actualization of the project, to help other young people. To be in some way conductors of this experience to other young people, so that we can create step by step a much wider array of information, to understand that there is always a way to make our dream come true. If this dream means that at the end of the journey you will do what you want, working as wish, earning as much as you want, helping the ones you love, then the way to make it is to be able to turn your dream in a project.
Today, we run often into the powerlessness of many young people facing unemployment. Yesterday morning, among the many messages I receive as usual, I was impressed by a message of a group of young people from Gjirokastra. They wrote they have nothing to eat, they graduated from university, while husband and wife have been employed in X department, and they are going out to protest because they have nothing to eat. I called the number from which the message was sent and a girl answered. I don’t know her name, because I didn’t ask but I ask her what she graduated in. She told me she graduated in English. And how come you are unemployed? – I asked. She answered that the job was taken by somebody’s wife, and if it hadn’t been taken by that woman, the young girl would have been employed. I continued saying: Let’s pretend this is true, she is out and you get in. Does this solve the problem of the whole group of young people that you belong? You have a chance you have created with the investment that your parents and you made so that you earned a diploma in English. English is your path to employment. “Nobody is hiring me” – she replied. No, – I told her. I’m giving you an idea. Sit down at the computer and write who you are, write something about you. Then invite girls and boys of secondary of primary schools, the grownups, to come to you and take English classes. Print this in as many copies as there are schools in Gjirokastra, go to each and every one of them attach the announcement on the school’s door. Write also your phone number, and then let’s see what happens in two weeks. You will call me and either you’ll tell me that nobody showed up or that there are some 2, 3, 5 people, students or parents, interested to take classes from you. Not to mention that you can do this also in the villages nearby the town you live in. There are a lot of parents who want that their children to learn English, but there are no English teachers. If you are joined by some of your classmates who also studied English, you can start a business that provides this service, and at the end of every month you will earn much more money that you would from a salary, while doing a job that has nothing to do with what you have studied.
I brought this example to say that it is very important that we do our best to convey a very clear message;
If a girl or a boy has a dream, and they are pretty aware of it, this dream can come true. But in order to succeed, you need an idea, you need a path that takes you towards the actualization of the idea, and of course you need a project, not to mention perseverance and commitment.
It is very important that we spread the culture of project in every school, since the primary school, so that children in 7th, 8th and 9th grade, and then the adults can realize that the world we live in is the world of big competition and in this great competition is knowledge that makes a difference. With the passing of time, knowledge will be the one to make a difference. The culture of project, the ability to write a project and the persistence to actualize it by joining human resources that have the knowledge to do that job, are what make the difference.
If we leave things as they are, and after graduating young people sit in cafes and wait for jobs to come instead of the waiter and tell them “Here I am! Come with me”, or ask their mother and father to go to seek work for them, it is a true disaster. This big disaster translates into an even greater collective disaster that Albania, which on the way to the European Union must be prepared increasingly every day, every month, every year in order to plan the future and build reliable and fundable projects through their abilities and knowledge and not fail because they lack this culture, this mentality.
If we look how EU countries benefit from the financial resources available to them, we will see that there is something surprising that in fact is not surprising. Richer and more developed countries benefit more money, while less affluent and less developed countries receive less money. Be careful to not confuse the direction of reasoning, thinking that the strongest get the money more easily. No, those who are stronger know more and have more capacities to absorb more funds through projects, culture and their abilities as planners and executors. It is more difficult for those who are underdeveloped. Countries that have been recently admitted in the EU, within the first and second year in the European family, have achieved 3%, 4% of the amount they have available, but they could not use 95%, 96% or 97% of this amount. That’s because they did not have the capacity to absorb these funds through projects.
This applies to the individual, it applies to a community, it applies to a municipality, this applies to a country and this applies across the European Union.
This is why I believe that this small nucleus that was created by the selection in a competition, the first of this kind that helps us understand and learn how to expand and improve the very quality of this competition, should serve as a nucleus to share this experience, and through your example create the trust in others who can say: Yes, I can make it by myself, I will make this dream of mine come true. No matter how modest or big this dream is.
But the over 30 were annoyed and assailed us with messages saying that according to us “they are not worth anymore, they are nobody, that the government doesn’t care about them”, etc. This is not true. We have started another program for the over 30, but with a clear focus: How can I employ myself? I don’t have a job. What should I do? Wait for one or try do get one? I will wait and let my mother and father, or cousin, or my friend in Tirana, or my friend in the administration or in the government fix a job for me, and if I don’t have this friend I will spend my days in cafes complaining “this is how it goes”, “somebody must intercede for you”, “we have nobody who can intercede for us”, and so on.
Meanwhile, everybody has an opportunity. We want to open as many windows, so that more and more ideas and many efforts of this nature can find a way to be actualized. We will do this with government funds, but we want this to expand and people get informed that the government has and will have less and less funds, but there are funds for ideas and interesting projects abroad, in foreign organizations, in the European Union has so on. This I believe will contribute to use through knowledge the ability that municipalities themselves have to absorb funds, but because they lack human resources, they cannot manage to do such a thing.
I conclude by asking you to never forget that countries differ not because of what they have, but because of what they know. It is not what you have, but it is what you know that makes you rich. This is an example of all the developed countries, which are also countries that know more. And this is the plague of many underdeveloped countries that know less. If we know more, we will definitely have more. Just look at Norway, which I liked very much. Norway is the richest country in Europe in the waters and today, thanks to the use of these water resources, that are one of the strongest components of their growth, it is also the country where the sheikhs of Europe are believed to live. Albania is the second country for abundance of water resources. So, logically, if we believe that the welfare and wealth come from what we have, we should’ve been second for what we have. But not only aren’t we second, but we are the very last. Not only, but this asset has become a problem for us. It has become a problem for energy, for irrigation, for potable water. With the quantity of water that springs every day here, other countries could do wonders. Israel has no water, but how come Israel has perhaps the most developed agriculture in the world? How come Israel has the most wonderful way of developing agriculture and agricultural crops when there is no water? They even would get personalized tomato saplings, drop by drop like any family that takes water from the tap. And they get as much as they need, because there is no water. Where did this miracle come from? It came from knowledge, from research and from the project based on knowledge and research. In Japan, every first day at schools begins with a sentence with which teachers welcome pupils. The sentence is: “Japan is a very poor country, that’s why the Japanese need to learn more than others”.
Thank you!
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Today, high school students and students under 30, winners of the government program “I too have a dream 2015” were guests of Prime Minister Edi Rama at the Hall of Maps in the Prime Minister’s Office.
The most compelling projects and innovative ideas of young people were selected through an open competition, where 734 young people applied across Albania.
Minister of Social Welfare and Youth Erion Veliaj noted that the projects selected are those that provide concrete solutions to issues for which many people think are to be addressed only by the government. “Apparently there are people in Albania believe that everyone can provide a solution to an issue of public interest” – Veliaj said.
The implementation of the winning projects will be supported financially by the government.
One of them is the project by Gjergj Ndoci, a teenager from Lezha, for the training of the blind through a special computer program. Ndoci said that 40 people of the community of the blind in Lezha will benefit from this program.
An original idea on how to clean the lake of Tirana in just one week and with a cost of 1 million only, by means of a machine that cleans up to 1.8 meters all urban waste his area. The idea was presented by the Shkëlzen Dunisha.
“Doctor score” is the innovative project proposed by Migel Parllaku, to assess the performance of doctors through a point system evaluation by patients themselves. Doctors with the average of the highest points stand in better positions. The goal, the young man says, is to stimulate doctors to have a better performance in the future, in addition to making a realistic assessment.
Contribution of 5 popular schools in Tirana to open a library in a suburban school in the capital city, which its students lack, is the project of a young woman from Tirana who believes in solidarity.
Admir Dacaj, a young man from Shkodra, aims at promoting and saving Albanian craft tradition. His project to create a website that will identify businesses crafts, cataloging and promoting them, to switch later to online sales, is the winning project.
Meanwhile, the government has started another program ” I too have a dream 2015″ for all those who are over 30 and seek support for an innovative idea or a project to start a community activity or a family business.
