Shpresa Support Programme for Albanian Speaking Refugees

The Shpresa Programme works with over 2,000 Albanian speaking refugees and migrants each year to foster integration and to support men, women and children, enabling them to contribute to the communities in which they now live and work.

At Shpresa, we have come into contact and supported:

• many hundreds of Albanian speaking people
• children who learn Albanian language dancing, perform and get involved in sports
• parents who learn English and parenting skills
• volunteers who get training and support and later on jobs
• women that suffer domestic violence and get protected
• people who need information and guidance, food or clothes

Shpresa has become the family for the young people who are here without their parents and has become the organisation where we all can knock for help and they will try their best to help.

Shpresa runs many projects to support the Albanian-speaking community in London and the UK.

• Children and Young People project - aims to improve the life , education and the wellbeing of the Albanian-speaking children from refugee, asylum and migrant backgrounds as well as enabling their voices to get heard.
• Women's Heath and Wellbeing project - aims to improve the chances of the Albanian-speaking women to break the isolation, loneliness and other barriers so they can improve their health, integrate within the society and play a full part in the family, community and society.
• Volunteering project - aims to promote volunteering amongst Albanian-speaking community as way to improve their chances of employment as well as their education and health. At the same time, as an organisation we offer work placements and internships, and team challenges for business teams.
• Advice and Advocacy project - aims to provide, in partnership with other providers such as MiCLU, Money A+E, Horizon, Manor gardens , New Europeans advice and advocacy on behalf of the Albanian-speaking clients in various fields - such as benefits, immigration , settlement , debts etc.
• Campaigning - aims to engage, up-skill and empower the Albanian-speaking people living in the UK, to work together to solve the problems that matter to them and for the common good.
• Resources - aims to share our learning, model of working and resources with other user-led groups to maximise our impact and play our active role in society.

Currently, we are offering all our services as  hybrid delivery and we are delivering 7 days per week  delivering in 

 - Newham 

 - Barking and Dagenham 

 - Redbridge

 - Edmonton 

 - Brent 

 - Croydon 

Our CEO received an Honorary Award as Migrant and Refugee Woman of the year in 2012, the David Crystal Award from the Chartered Institute of Linguists in 2014 in recognition of her work with Shpresa Programme fostering the study of community languages, the Ambassador  For Peace from Universal Peace federation December 2016 and recently, in May 2017, the UK Foreign Social Entrepreneur Award from Money Gram.

Our programme received the Queen’s Award for Volunteering in 2004. We hold the London Youth Quality Mark, Gold Award for excellence in our Youth Work provision. We also hold the Special Distinction Award from the National Resource Centre for Supplementary Education for exceptional all round high quality supplementary school provision. We were awarded the Forum for Health and Well Being’s Communities of Health Award for the third year running in 2016. Shpresa programme fully achieved  the Trusted Charity  level 2  Quality Mark (known as PQASSO level 2 4rth addition ) from NCVO in August 2018.

In October 2016, we were delighted to receive the Marsh Award for our contribution to the fight against modern slavery for our work with trafficked women and children.