Building Power, Not Just Access: YMCA’s Work in Digital Equity and Youth Participation in Albania.
A recent visit to Albania underscored a fundamental truth: digital equity and youth voice are not separate agendas, but essential pillars of genuinely inclusive societies. Across Berat and Tirana, as well as other Digital Hubs across the country, YMCA’s work demonstrates how strategic investment in people and communities creates the conditions for transformation and democratic renewal.
Digital Equity as a Foundation for Dignity
The Berat Digital Hub represents YMCA Albania’s commitment to vulnerable populations in one of the country’s most challenging regions. Hub leaders, beneficiaries, and younger participants engaged in everything from structured HP LIFE courses to basic computer literacy classes. The impact is tangible: community members arrive with minimal digital confidence and leave with skills, credentials, and clear pathways for advancement.
Digital skills are a prerequisite for employment, education, civic participation, and social inclusion. In Berat, where economic opportunities are limited and young people face significant barriers to upward mobility, the Digital Hub serves as a gateway to opportunity.
The community’s engagement with these programs demonstrates the potential that emerges when access barriers are removed. Participants, ranging from teenagers to adults returning to education, actively engaged in learning, asking substantive questions, building confidence, and reimagining their professional possibilities.
YMCA Albania’s team in Berat exemplifies the principles essential to digital equity work in vulnerable areas: sustained commitment, localized understanding, and genuine partnership with communities.
In the capital of the country, the Tirana Digital Hub, situated within the city’s vibrant Kombinat Community Centre, demonstrates that digital equity remains a critical imperative even in urban environments. While cities typically offer greater access to technology and learning opportunities, significant gaps persist.
The Hub serves young people and community members who might otherwise lack pathways to essential digital skill development. By providing structured learning in an accessible, community-anchored setting, the Hub reduces barriers to participation and fosters genuine inclusion and empowerment. The Tirana Digital Hub exemplifies a principle central to YMCA’s work: investing in people and communities builds stronger, more resilient, and more connected societies.
Youth Participation as a Democratic Imperative
On the 15th of January, the Youth in Power workshop convened young people with YMCA Sweden and YMCA Europe, alongside the Swedish Embassy, to address a critical question: What does authentic youth participation in decision-making actually mean?
The workshop revealed both the scope of the challenge and the opportunity it presents. Research consistently shows that young people across Europe report feeling unrepresented, disillusioned with electoral politics, and excluded from decision-making processes that will affect them longest. Symbolic consultations, where youth are invited to contribute but decisions are made elsewhere, have eroded trust in democratic institutions and created a generation skeptical of political engagement.
Dragos Tarta, Advocacy Lead for YMCA Europe, delivered opening remarks, emphasizing a critical distinction: youth participation must move beyond performative engagement to authentic power-sharing. When young people encounter only closed doors and distant performances, democracy ceases to feel like a shared project. Meaningful participation requires that young people’s lived experiences, needs, and insights directly inform public policy and institutional decisions.
The workshop exemplified YMCA’s distinctive role as a convener and translator in the youth participation space. The organization brought together young people from diverse backgrounds, policy makers, and practitioners to co-create shared understanding about what authentic participation requires. Critically, YMCA modeled what inclusive decision-making can look like: creating space for young people’s voices to be heard, respected, and acted upon.
Building Societies That Work for Everyone
These two initiatives, digital equity and youth participation, are expressions of a coherent vision: societies where barriers are systematically dismantled, where access is universal, and where all voices matter in shaping collective futures.
YMCA’s work in Albania extends beyond service delivery. While the organization is undoubtedly teaching digital skills and facilitating workshops, the deeper work is building the conditions for active, empowered communities. YMCA is demonstrating that strategic investment in people, especially those excluded from opportunity, creates stronger, more resilient, and more just societies.
This impact is made possible through critical partnerships, including YMCA’s collaboration with HP.
The HP-YMCA Digital Hubs initiative has enabled YMCA to reach thousands of young people and adults across vulnerable communities in Albania and beyond. Equally important are the YMCA teams on the ground: practitioners and teachers who understand their communities deeply, who recognize potential, and who remain committed to systemic change.
Learn more about YMCA Albania.
