History, Vision and Mission

The Albanian Women Empower Network--AWEN is established on July 1st, 2009 (and legally registered on December 27th, 2011) as initiative of eight non-profit organizations focusing on women protection, with the valuable support of Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation. Our network aims at strengthening the cooperation among organizations in order to enhance the impact of joint activities at national level and to empower the feminist movement in Albania.

Our network currently consists of 10 women organizations from different regions of Albania, which are:

• “Albanian Centre for Women with Social Problems” (Durres);

• “Me, the Woman” (Pogradec);

• “Agritra Vision” (Peshkopi);

• “Gender Alliance for Development Center” (Tirana);

• “Counselling Line for Women & Girls” (Tirana);

• “Center for Legal Civic Initiatives” (Tirana);

• “Woman to Woman” (Shkoder);

• “Women Forum Elbasan” (Elbasan);

• "Vatra Psycho-Social Centre” (Vlora);

• “Jona” (Saranda).

Our Vision is:

“A society where women and girls fully enjoy their human rights in Albania”

Our values are: 

The AWEN Network embodies and transmits the following values, principles and commitments:

• Respect Human Rights for all

• React in coherent manner to ensure protection of women’s rights in particular and human rights in general

• Work together with network members and partners to empower women

• Encourage partner organizations and commit to implementation of mutual initiatives for protection of women’s rights

• Deal in honest, reliable manner and achieve what we say

• Social activism lies at the foundation of our success

• Commit to involvement of citizens, youth, women, vulnerable communities, different social groups in our efforts to protect

Our Mission is: 

AWEN is a national network organization of women’s rights organizations that work together to empower girls and women socially, economically and politically to participate and realize their rights

We achieve our goals through joint advocacy at international, national and local levels, raising awareness, monitoring, and building capacity of duty bearers to meet their obligations according to national legislation and international conventions, conducting research on protection and promotion of women human rights, serving as a forum for learning and sharing praxis and hub for support and capacity development of members, as well as forwarding and managing grants for network members and other civil society organizations.

Our network works in the field of protection of human rights, in particular, the rights of women and girls, aiming at the social, economic, cultural and political empowerment of women. The main thematic areas are:

• Reducing prevalence of GBV including human trafficking 

• Participation of women in politics

• Economic empowerment of women

• Supporting women CSOs becoming more democratic, sustainable, environmentally concerned and efficient in realizing their missions