Coordinating Council for Albanians in the Netherlands (CRAN)
CRAN is the Dutch abbreviation for the Coordination Council of Albanians in the Netherlands. It is a voluntary diaspora-based community organisation founded in 1998 by members of the ethnic Albanian diaspora living in the Netherlands. The organisation has the following goals:
1. To preserve, promote and present the Albanian culture in the Dutch society;
2. Cooperate with other NGOs and exchange information with the aim of undertaking projects together;
3. Stimulate cooperation and exchange of ideas, good practices and people which are able to spread information and experience inside and outside the Albanian and Dutch societies;
4. To prepare and make available information and study materials in Albanian for Albanian diaspora in the Netherlands as well as Western Balkans;
5. Gather humanitarian aid for Western Balkans;
6. Organise activities that promote stability in the Balkan region and the role of Albanians within.
To achieve these goals CRAN gathers and spreads information about the Western Balkan region. It organises seminars, conferences and workshops to discuss important integration and participation issues for the Albanian community in the Netherlands. The organisation aims also to address Balkan issues on development and prognoses of political, economic, security, ethnic, cultural and religion questions, identification of conflicts, theirsources and origins and especially conflict prevention and conflict resolution.
CRAN has a strong network in the Western Balkans, due to her roots Albanian diaspora-based community in the Netherlands. Albanian diaspora in the Netherlands has very strong family, friends, business and civil society ties in the countries of origin. The second reason for this is the shelter and support which CRAN and her volunteers provided to Albanian exchange students coming from the Balkans to study in the Netherlands. These (former) exchange students hold nowadays very important key positions in Western Balkans and became and still are ambassadors of CRAN.
CRAN is a voluntary diaspora-based community organisation and one of the founders of SMS. As a voluntary organisation CRAN does not always have the professional capacity and resources to manage and implement certain activities and projects. In such cases CRAN does appeal for professional support of SMS in implementing these activities/projects. One resent example of this cooperation is a joint working conference on “Dissemination and benchmarking of ’best practices’ in democratisation initiatives of and for youth in West Balkan”. This CRAN conference was held from 2nd to 6th of April 2007 in Prishtina (Kosovo) with full support from SMS. Youth and youth workers form different Balkan countries (Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia and Croatia) as well as the Dutch (Balkan) diaspora-based community leaders (Albanian and Roma) and Dutch NGOs participated in this conference. The goals of this conference where: 1) to build and sustain democratic and civil society initiatives, which are initiated and executed by young people in the Western Balkan region; 2) To inform the organisations from the Western Balkan about initiatives and projects about youth community development in their region, exchange experiences and formulate action plans for developing new projects and proposals.
CRAN
Postbus 27
3500 AA Utrecht
E-mail: info@cran.nl
www.cran.nl