Eva Shimaj is a Community person with a strong social development and community engagement background. She fosters connections and positively impacts local communities, and I’m happy that she joined the Community Media project as one of the Community Managers from 42 European countries.
And I have a chance to share her story with you! The country she is living in is Albania! 🇦🇱I was there in 2021 with my friends (it seems so long ago), and Eva and I connected online. I was genuinely inspired by her focus on long-term impact and her desire to be an excellent example for the young women from northern Albania.
Check out the interview below!
Alla: Hi Eva! I'm happy I found you on LinkedIn. Tell a bit about your Community Management experience: how did you become a Community Manager?
Eva: Since I was a student, I was involved with student movements and youth groups, where we tried to empower young people’s voices and create youth-centered safe spaces. After I finished my university, I went on to find “serious jobs” such as working in a bank for a while or in an international company, but I always felt like my skills were being wasted on making profits for people I did not like.
I was lucky to have the opportunity to do a master’s degree abroad, which gave me a bit of a break and time to self-reflect on what I wanted to do. Equipped with the confidence that a master’s degree in the UK gives you, when I returned to Albania in 2022, I dared to directly contact SDI (Social Development Investment) and tell them: “I want to work for you!”. SDI is an Albanian NGO that works primarily with women and rural youth, two underserved groups that struggle to find employment, capital, and opportunities, especially in rural areas and particularly in the north of Albania (the poorest region).
SDI attracted me because they aimed for sustainable interventions that equip people with skills and resources necessary to empower themselves from within. I could see that their work had an impact on the communities they worked on, something that was lacking in the organisations I was involved as a student. In January 2024, I moved to one of the small towns in northern Albania to be closer to the community and establish the Digital Roots centre in Tropoja, which offers education and employment opportunities for young people in town.
Photo credit: Eva Shimaj
Since the north of Albania has experienced a massive brain drain in the last decade or so, our work is focused on reversing that and creating attractive job opportunities for young people so they don't have to emigrate abroad or move to the capital. The future of these towns is in the hands of the young people who decide to build their lives here, and we want to create opportunities for them to do so.
I feel like I am at the right place, doing something impactful and necessary, and I feel content with myself that this is how I put my business degree to use. I thought I had to compromise my values and principles to make a living, but I found I could integrate my desire to serve the community into my career path, and I am happy where it has taken me.
Alla: What communities have you worked with?
Eva: When I started out, I was mostly focused on students and young people in general (as a student and a young person myself). Since joining SDI, I have had the opportunity to work with more than 300 female artisans across the country, designing capacity-building programs for them and identifying market opportunities for their small enterprises. I have collaborated with their families, local government, businesses, media, and international organisations to empower the artisan sector and provide financial independence for the women involved.
Since being engaged with the Digital Roots project, I have worked with and for young people of Tropoja and Kukesi (north of Albania), and it has been incredible to witness their growth just in the last year. I found myself being a teacher and a mentor to young people looking for hope, and I felt the huge responsibility of that position.
Living in Tropoja for more than a year now has given me the opportunity to belong to a small-town community (a huge difference from living in the capital) and to contribute to the development of this community beyond the Digital Roots project. I have been involved in a few community actions and movements since moving here, including: