Young people, face uncertainty about the broken transitions from education to the world of work and the consequences of long-term unemployment. In countries such as Albania where youth unemployment is more than 20%, the impact of a disruptive crisis can be considerable.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about disruption in the daily lives of people in Albania, as has the economic, social and productive fabric that sustains societies. Businesses and non-formal training providers are immediately affected, their activities and plans put on hold. As in-class training has been suspended for all training providers, digitalization became more prominent and those training providers that had invested in digital learning were able to adapt fast to the situation and offer online training. They didn’t completely suspend their activity, and rather retained their trainees, and in some, cases even acquired new ones.

“I started attending a course in Java Programing at the Albanian ICT Academy. I wanted to continue the training, but the COVID-19 lockdown disrupted classes,” says Anxhelo Cenomeri, 18, from Albania. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unique challenges to all types and levels of learning, including schooling, apprenticeships and skills development.

However, opportunities may arise from it, especially when young people and their parents, surprisingly to an extent, are prepared to face it. As the writer, C.S Lewis says, “hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” This is where RisiAlbania, has invested in and adapted online learning and collaboration to local contexts to ensure continuity of learning and training.

We’ve learned that the pandemic has accelerated the transition towards blended learning, an approach to education that combines online educational materials and opportunities with traditional place-based classroom methods. The approach is no longer complementary but an important source of learning and training.

RisiAlbania has been supporting the ICT sector for non-formal skills development for about two years. This didn’t happen by accident; it was based on a good understanding of the relevance and opportunities that skills development in ICT offers to the future careers of young people in Albania. With the changing nature of the world of work, future employment opportunities are for young people with digital skills in the coming years, with some economies predicting a talent gap for workers.

Shqipe Shehu, 24, is one of the trainees who had started online training in Front End Development before the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. The course is introduced by Tirana Center of Technology, one of the training providers that RisiAlbania has supported. “I enrolled in an online course because I live far away from the training center. So, the outbreak of the pandemic didn’t affect me. I have strong hopes of finding employment as a Developer once I complete the training.”

Back in autumn of 2018, RisiAlbania supported two kinds of innovative approaches: the first relied upon the virtual classrooms, delivered in real-time, with high interactivity and where generally one lecturer follows seven students; the second innovation is the online platform of recorded videos, either 100% online or a hybrid model, having 30% of the training as practice in the classroom and 70% recorded videos. These innovative methods resulted effective to increase the geographic coverage in the country, give flexibility to students to attend the training programs by lowering the costs.

“Through an online platform, we wanted to allow participating in the training,” says Gladiola Dona, the owner of Hospitality and Tourism Academy. The opportunities are crucial for many young people who live outside Tirana, the capital. They can’t afford the costs of travel and accommodation. For some women, too, the lack of time to attend in-class training is an issue.

However, not all courses can be offered online. Hardware trainings need ICT labs while courses in hospitality and tourism need to practice processes in classrooms.

“I have suspended all the courses,” says Arbër Avdija, who offers job-related courses in tourism and hospitality in the coastal area of Lezha, north of Albania. For Arber and the trainees, the lockdown due to the pandemic coincided with the time for practical training that needs to be delivered face-to-face and supervised closely by the trainer. The trainees are young women and men from the area, where Arber has built a strong social capital as a trainer and has a good reputation among the business community and trainees. This helps to place at (almost) 100% every young woman and man that finishes successfully the courses.

In addition,  the purchase power decreased due to the pandemic, while many trainees still remained hesitant on online delivery methods and preferred to wait for face-to-face delivery Regardless of the pros and cons of each learning methodology, the pandemic contributed in highlighting more, the necessity for digitalization and in fighting perceptions that an online course can also be very beneficial and contribute to a more skilled youth that have higher chances to get employed.