Week 2 - Learning in Lepushe

Dinner with Arlinda

After the first week in Albania, I started to develop some kind of an idea of what I wanted to accomplish before I left. I decided to frame the classroom experience in a way that emphasized the main goal of the B3P project, which is to encourage the development of sustainable businesses in the region, in order to give people who grew up in the local villages and want to continue living in the area a chance to do so. Now, I realize that I might seem like a strange candidate for this kind of work. As someone who has started to make a life for himself as an expatriate, this is more than a little incongruous. After all, why would I want to spend a month working to encourage people who have already decided to leave to stay and rebuilt their community when I've seemingly decided to leave my own behind?

A Short History of Albania

Albania is a young state with a long history. Although its lineage stretches back thousands of years to the Illyrian peoples who long inhabited the eastern Adriatic coastline, the modern country only celebrated its 100 year anniversary last November.