Albanian Scholarship Effort

The Albanian Scholarship Effort(ASE) is an initiative found by a group of Albanian students in world's best universities in order to help foster a generation of intellectual leaders for their country. The ASE team offers education counseling for talented and ambitious low-income Albanian students who want to study abroad through scholarships. By advocating quality education, local activism, and international citizenship, the ASE aims to grow a generation of intellectual leaders who will become local changemakers for a better future. The ASE believes that leadership and education go hand in hand, ergo instead of simply offering education/ scholarship counseling, we devised a two-year mentorship program for 10 selected Albanian students from the ages 12 to 17. While the end goal of this two-year program is for the students to receive international scholarships, the most fundamental goal is for the student to learn how to be locally active, independent thinkers, and goal oriented leaders. We try to teach this concept by demanding our students to do a local project which aims to solve a local problem in their community. This on-field experience, combined with the guidance of our experienced mentors, will give life to the "leadership gene" of our students at a young age. The local project is the focus of the first year of the two year mentorship. During this year the student will also go over a designed leadership-focused curriculum with their respective mentor, treating subjects such as the nature of leadership, volunteering, responsible citizenship, and social change. The second year will continue to grow on the idea of leadership, but the attention will be more on the details of applying to schools abroad — the application process, essays, recommendations, standardized testing, and interviews.