Albania is the controversial country, part of the Balkan Peninsula, considered as the backyard of Europe. It is very much close to Europe/Western Europe and even to western culture, adhering to it and waiting for decades to be a rightful part of it. Albania is pain, is music, is resistance, is trouble, wild natural beauty, is corruption, tolerance, hospitality, delicious food; is good, is bad, is dark, is beautiful – is controversial. Federico Sicurella, professor at the University of Milan now, described Albania after his first visit: “She is the hard-faced girl. She is a teenager that got back to the world about eighteen years ago. She stays crouched down on the rounded top of the armed belly, where it used to live in captivity spying on the world from a television shaped slit. She looks around, wonders what is worth believing in now. Her name is Albania”. The Albanologist, Mr. Robert Elsie writes, “Geographically, Albania has always been at the crossroads of empires and civilizations even though it has often been isolated from the mainstream of European history.

As a geographical and cultural entity, and as a nation, Albania has often been enigmatic and somewhat misunderstood.

Albania, in Albanian Shqipëria, is officially known as the Republic of Albania and it is situated in the southeast of Europe. It gained independence from the Ottoman Empire on the 28th of November, 1912. From the end of WWII, 1944 to 1990 Albania was a Communist-totalitarian state and it was controlled completely by the Communist Party based on the Marxist-Leninist ideology. Power was effectively consolidated in one man. During the 90s the anti-totalitarian revolts swept Albania as well and 1992 signs the beginning of the democratic system, being the last country in the region. In terms of political and social ties, Albania remained one of the most isolated countries in the world until the early 1990s. After the 90s more and more people have left rural areas for urban ones, particularly in the northern districts and even more have migrated abroad. 

Still today, the path of democratization of Albania remains unclear and is defined as a hybrid regime, with a delay in the processes of democratic governance and the main reasons for this is the missing detachment, or the non-separation from the mentality of communist past The past can become an obstacle to the future when it is not studied, recognized and confronted with.” With the collapse of communism the Albanian society went through difficult and at the same time important and fundamental societal changes and extreme transformations, in terms of economic and politics, mentality and way of living. It was a very drastic change that brought many challenges and created many gaps, in particular in education, in the health system, within the family as well and in the interpersonal relationships; affected the demographic processes of fertility, mortality and migration and resulted in major changes in the size and composition of the population.                                               

This was the reality when the NGO sector was born.