ANYN: Tirana’s Municipality must include youth needs in its budget of 2019!

Tirana, November 13, 2018 - The Albanian National Youth Network (ANYN) attended the Consultation Meeting organised by the Tirana’s Municipality on the issue of Youth Budget 2019. ANYN during this meeting expressed its support for the Tirana’s Municipality work to implement the Youth Local Action Plan 2018-2020, focused on priorities set by young people.

Youth Card: The Albanian National Youth Network requested from the Tirana’s Municipality representatives that the Youth Card should be fully funded by the Municipality's budget for year 2019 to be available to all young people, university and high school students. The Youth Card was promised to youth since 2016, as part of the Tirana City Card, but still has not been implemented.

Youth Centres: ANYN also required a change at the decision of the Tirana City Council that young people and civil society organizations should pay to use Multifunctional Youth Centre (TEN) and the Fujimoto Cloud, which previously use to be free of charge to young people. ANYN asked the Tirana’s Municipality to allocate in the budget of 2019 budget funds for the maintenance of these youth cultural spaces.

Schools as a Community Centres: ANYN and the Albanian Coalition for Education (ACE) demanded from the Municipality that for the coming year, they should fully fund the needs of the schools which are functioning also as community centres.

Youth Employment: ANYN demanded a change at the current formula for promoting youth employment in the city. The Municipality of Tirana is supporting 20 young people in its internship program, where 16 of them are employed at the business sector while youth are paid by the municipality. ANYN required by the Municipality to increase the number of youths benefiting by the program and social and health benefits shall not be for 6 months but for 1 working year.

Support youth organizations and initiatives: ANYN emphasized that in this process, it is important to inform young people and civil society organizations on how the Municipality intends to support youth initiatives. Currently, many organizations have no information lack knowledge on procedures for applying to it.

Finally, ANYN appraised the consultative meetings organised by the Municipality of Tirana for their annual budget, as an important element of youth participation in budget consultation and decision-making processes, focusing on the need to budget for the implementation of the objectives and activities of the Local Action Plan 2018- 2020.

For more information, contact us at the e-mail address: info@anyn.al