Harvard Diaspora Project Wants Your Say!

By: Valon Xoxa    March 6, 2015

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The CID shows that “at least one third of Albanians live outside the borders of their home countries in the Balkans. In the countries where they currently live and work many of them have achieved levels of professional and economic success that would not have been possible at home. We are driven by the image of what the impact of connecting this wealth of knowledge, connections and economic capital with the home countries would be on the Balkans.”

The objectives of CID’s Diaspora Program include:

  • It ensures that the diaspora relations have proper place on the political agenda of the countries in the Balkans.
  • It facilitates the relations between the home governments and the diaspora community organizations abroad.
  • It supports the home governments with building capacities to engage with the diaspora and develop strategies for leveraging its potential to promote economic and social development in the Balkans.

CID’s Diaspora Program starts with reinforcing the relations with the Albanians in the USA, but has the ambition to include all countries with significant Albanian population. Their action plan has three stages:

The first stage involves a series of meetings in the USA between the diaspora on the one hand, and government officials and private sector representatives on the other. The first three meetings will take place in Washington D.C., New York City and Boston in spring of 2015. In June or September of 2015, a joint delegation of Harvard and Diaspora leaders will visit the Balkans and work on establishing the foundations of a strategy for engaging the diaspora in the country’s development. The diaspora strategy should be the main outcome of the visit. The third stage involves implementation of this strategy.

For further details on eligibility and regulations to participate in the program, you can click HERE. To fill out the survey, click HERE.

Valon Xoxa

Valon Xoxa is a staff member of Kosovodiaspora.org. He holds a bachelor degree from Westminster College (MO) in Cultural Anthropology and Sociology. Currently resides in Prishtina, and is a freelance contributor and editor at KosovoDiaspora.org. With an interest in contemporary culture, he seeks to find and incorporate articles from the Kosovar Diaspora that would shed light upon the interesting characteristics of this important global community. He has published a research article through UNDP’s School on Human Development titled “Mobility and Public Participation: A Case Study of the Kosovar Diaspora”, where a rather interesting Andersonian perspective is taken at understanding the Internet as a national identity creation medium.

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