Blerina Guga: JAA Stands Firm to Contribute!

BY RUDINA HOXHA

CHIEF EXECUTIVE Officer

of Junior Achievement of Albania (JAA), Blerina Guga is happy to share the vision, the mission as well as the objective and the achievements of her team with TRAILBLAZING MAGAZINE in an exclusive interview.

Guga, appointed in this post in the beginning of 2020, explains that the JAA mission is to promote and support economic education and entrepreneurship among young people in Albania. “It is a broad and challenging mission, but achievable through strategic support, partnerships and innovation on the way,” she says in this interview. According to her, JAA educational

programs are part of the core curricula form preschool to 12th grade. Furthermore, Guga summarizes on the JAA projects and programs.

Full interview below:

Mrs. Guga, thank you for accepting ourrequest for this interview. Please can you tell us a bit more about yourself and your new role in the Junior Achievement of Albania (JAA).

Thank you Trailblazing Magazine for having me! I would love to talk more about JAA first, as it will help the reader understand the passion and the commitment it inspires to me and the team.

Junior Achievement of Albania is an organization dedicated to financial and entrepreneurial education of youth in Albania, aiming to inspire, prepare and help them succeed in the real-world job markets and entrepreneurship.

Junior Achievement itself is an education model and curricula that comes from the US and for 102 years is still succeeding to prepare and guide youngsters worldwide in 122 countries toward healthy understanding of finances and entrepreneurial paths.

In Albania, JAA is a strategic investment of Albanian-American Development Foundation since 2012 in close collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Sports. Starting with elective courses and modules introduces to the preuniversity education curricula at the time, JAA achieved to become part of the new competence-based curricula of the preuniversity education

system in the country, delivering the needed support to educate and evaluate the entrepreneurial and lifelong learning competences.

Every year, since September 2018 every child in Albania, from the first to the 12th grade, meets JAA concepts, modules and activities in its core and elective curricula, namely there are 18 JAA experience during one’s school path of every Albanian young person. JAA is an education model that equips young people with the needed skills to succeed in their path, and deepen their learning experiences through practical implementation of those skills.

JAA is a dynamic team of 9 that goes beyond usual suspected NGO dynamics and modus operandi, to engage young Albanians in extracurricular activities such as finance bootcamps, local and

regional innovation camps, international trade games and entrepreneurship’s fairs and competitions, just to name a few.

I joined the team in early 2019, after 20 years of working experience in the NGO sector in Albania and some 2 years of public administration experience. This organization was the perfect bond of my passion for lifelong learning with its mission and development pillars “Financial Education, Entrepreneurship and Work Readiness”.

What is the mission of the JAA and can you mention some of its main current projects?

JAA mission is to promote and support economic education and entrepreneurship among young people in Albania. It is a broad and challenging mission, but achievable through strategic support, partnerships and innovation on the way.

Since 2018, JAA due to its work and persistence, JAA programs are present full scale in the Albanian pre university education system. JAA educational programs are part of the core curricula form preschool to 12th grade, through a dedicated chapter to financial and entrepreneurial education in “Citizenship” 1-8 subject, integrated part of the “Economy 12” subject and in the elective curricula through is elective modules “Students’ company” and “Job shadow” offered to 11th and 12th graders all over Albania.

skills.

“JAA in High Schools’ core and elective curricula” is the second biggest project of ours, that has 2 very interesting components. The elective modules of “Students’ company” and “Job shadow” offered to 11th and 12th graders all over Albania, followed by at least 4000 young students each year, and modules of “Business Ethics”, “Success Skills”, “Be Entrepreneurial” and “Personal Finances” are integrated part of “Economy 12” subject, tough to every Albanian 12th grader each year.

“Debating Economics” and “JuniorUP” are the recent projects of JAA, that enrich the offer of the center to young Albanians of the tertiary education, to learn and practice skills and mindsets needed to succeed in the 21st century. It would take me a long winter’s night to talk about each of them, but I invite the reader to jump to our webpage and social media channels to see more.

Proud of our achievements, but inspired for more, JAA’s further strategic steps, that we’re slightly explored, are digitalization and gamification of learning experiences on financial education and entrepreneurship and building teachers’ digital and inclusive educational skills.

If we can talk in figures, how many young entrepreneurs have been supported by JAA in facing their startup obstacles?

Our “JuniorUP” or JUP project, dedicated to startups support in Albania is the youngest of our programs. It just launched in late November, and we had the wonderful chance to have AADF Chairman of Board of Directors, and a very successful businessman, Ms.Michael Granoff, to share with the aspirants, the beauty and the challenges of entrepreneurship. JUP is designed to assist and support young entrepreneurs coming from JAA’s Students’ Company Program and emerging as startups. It is still too early to claim numbers to such a fresh

initiative, but proudly we claim the reasoning and the results of JAA work in high schools’ elective programs in years. As per today there are 8 startups that emerged from JAA’s Students Company Program, that are operative in the markets, employing other than their funders, 45 persons, and still growing. JUP program, is tailored toward their support and miniacceleration, following the successful model of Junior Achievement Europe StartUp program.

Do you think youth entrepreneurship is already a trending topic in the Albanian economic agenda? How is the JAA contributing in this aspect?

Albania is an entrepreneurial nation in my humble opinion. Courageous, curious and early explorers of economic opportunities outside the country, it is about time to make it happen sustainably within the country. Lot of attention is being paid to entrepreneurship in the economic agenda, governmental supports scheme for startups, donors’ community highly grown attention and financing of startups, are all

plausible, but it is just the beginning. Integration to regional and worldwide markets and entrepreneurial trends, learned and applied models of entrepreneurship of a different kind, inspired and oriented by local needs and potentials, but prepared to offer global integrated solutions. At Junior Achievement of Albania, we will continue to do our work, to apply a teaching and practicing models of entrepreneurship skills that grow gradually from early schoolyears to first professional and/or entrepreneurial attempts of young Albanians, with the support of the AADF and the collaboration of our local and international partners.

To your knowledge, what type of support is a young entrepreneur or aspiring entrepreneur primarily looking for? Which are the main barriers, besides financing an idea, that young people face to become entrepreneurs?

Entrepreneurship is a skill that can be applied to any field of activity, not only while engaging in business endeavors. Its skills are fundamental to personal and professional growth. Young entrepreneurs mainly complain for lack of financial support, no business angels’ structures in place in the country and many other missing tiles of the puzzle. Whereas it is a journey that asks for personal and team growth, coordination and communication among many actors and factors before reaching the point of investment. Exactly as you point it in your last question, entrepreneurship is a process of becoming, transforming and upgrading of one’s idea to a successful sustainable business offer. That’s were JAA stands firm to contribute! Thank you!