Albanian Teachers Trained in Empowerment Self-Defense

From the 27th of August to the 2nd of September, ESD Global Self-Defense held an empowerment self-defense instructor training in Albania, with 30 high school principals, teachers and education professionals trained to deliver basic empowerment self-defense (ESD) skills training to their students. Empowerment self-defense is a model of self-defense training that prioritizes a focus on increasing participant confidence, providing a range of skills including awareness and verbal skills, and serving survivors of trauma and other marginalized populations. The 7-day training equipped them with tools to understand how to prevent and respond to violence, how to teach emotional safety, boundary-setting, and communication, and how to teach basic verbal and physical self-defense techniques to their students in schools.

This training of teachers complements the project “E Fortë Si Grua " (Strong like a Woman), a larger effort that is to be implemented in the months to come, organized in partnership with UN Women and Aikido Albania, with the financial support of the Swedish Embassy, and with the support and active engagement of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of Albania. One of the main components of the project is to introduce ESD training for students into ten selected public and private schools in Albania, with ESD Global instructor training as a first step to equip teachers with the tools they need to serve their students.

The short-term impact of the training

The participants were both women and men from the selected schools and were mostly in the age group 35-44. Before the training, only 29% of respondents had some form of knowledge about Empowerment Self-Defense. In the pre-training survey, we wanted to assess their level of self-confidence and their initial self-protection skills. Before the training, 56 % reported feeling confident in their ability to defend themselves physically, while 72% felt confident defending themselves verbally. However, 40% of the participants did not feel confident in their ability to recognize a potentially dangerous situation, and 44% were not confident in their ability to prevent a sexual assault.

After the training, participants reported an increase in their feeling of safety. While before the training 40% did not feel completely safe in their daily life, after the training that percentage jumped to 96%. The training also increased participants self-confidence in their ability to defend themselves: a 32% increase in confidence in their abilities to defend themselves physically. After training, a full 100% reported feeling confident in abilities to defend themselves verbally.

After the training, 92% of participants (a 16% increase) reported feeling confident in using their voice to get help. Before training, only 40% reported feeling confident to use a physical defensive strike to defend themselves. After the training, that percentage jumped to 76%.

Data collection implemented by ESD Global on the effects of the training also aimed to assess participants ability to not only use empowerment self-defense skills themselves, but also teach ESD and talk about ESD-related topics to students in their class settings. Before the training, only 36% of the respondents felt confident in teaching self-defense skills, while after the training this share reached 60%. There was also an increase of 40% in respondents self-reported confidence in teaching physical self-defense strategies, and an increase of 28% in confidence in teaching verbal self-defense strategies. After the training, 80% of the teachers reported feeling confident in leading discussions around Gender-Based Violence, and 84% in leading discussions around violence prevention. Teachers are key to making empowerment self-defense training accessible to students in classroom settings, and the data collected shows promising evidence that ESD instructor training can increase teachers confidence in addressing these issues.

“Careful, it is contagious!”

Participants agreed that the training exceeded their expectations. One participant, who wished to remain anonymous, reported the following: “For me the part of this program that was the worthiest was learning the skill to verbally de-escalate the violence through levels in my tone of voice and body language. I had prior physical training being a Martial Artist, so for me, the verbal part was the most important one. And the second thing was learning the skill to de-escalate the situation, be it in a fight or in a debate or in a confrontation of any kind with anybody.”

Esmeralda Xheraj, School Principal from Durres, highlighted that “often we get tired of looking for thoughts, enlightenment, inspiration to change but we never realize that often change lies in simple things but in perfection. Thank you for changing my approaches and findings. You are an inspiration!" Likewise, Sister Ema Dodaj, School Principal from Lezhë, thinks that “it would be nice to have such opportunities for as many people as possible. A different approach and method of living but also practicing our profession!"

This training, delivered by ESD Global staff, was constructed within the framework of the gender sensitive post-earthquake recovery and reconstruction project implemented by UN Women Albania, and supported financially by the Embassy of Sweden in Tirana, through the UN Albania SDG Acceleration Fund. Petra Burcher, Head of Development Cooperation of the Embassy of Sweden in Albania declared “This is an innovative way to address this old issue (gender-based violence). We hope to replicate it in our other programs."

Likewise, Bora Muzhaqi, Deputy Minister of Education, expressed her support and enthusiasm for the training and the project: "My heartfelt thanks go out to all the participants, trainers and other backstage heroes who work to ensure the spread of Empowerment through Self Defense.” As a byproduct of this training, the sense of solidarity spread through the group of participants. In their words: "Careful, it is contagious!"

What is next?

The support of the Minister of Education is an important part of this project, because the final objective is to present a study to the Ministry of Education on the impact of teaching ESD in Albanian schools. Indeed, the new graduates from the ESD Global instructor training have now started piloting the ESD methodology in their school communities in Tirana, Lezhë, Durrës and Kavaja. Some of them have already starting sharing the tools learned with their colleagues. To facilitate their work, each school received a donated kit of tools that they will use to prepare their ESD classes and activities.

ESD Global wishes to thank all of the organizations and institutions that collaborated to make this training happen: UN Women in Albania, Embassy of Sweden through the Sweden Government Agency for Development Cooperation, our local partner Aikido Albania, Embassy of Israel in Albania, El Halev and IMPACT Global.