Albania’s aspirations for its young people, articulated in the National Youth Strategy, cannot be faulted; its capacity to deliver across this spectrum of themes, and throughout the country, is quite another matter. The policies proposed make absolute sense in relation to the preceding analysis and vision, but “what to do” is one thing, “how to do it” is quite another. Recurrently, the international review team was told that there were laws that were not implemented or that nobody observed. This gap between the theory of policy and the practice of policy is typical for these kinds of abstract blueprint approaches. Policies are not achieved through the writing of a document! There can, of course, be “natural” resistance to centralised attempts to find and impose solutions to social questions, particularly in countries with certain histories, like Albania. People are inclined not to “fit in” with new prescriptions. The National Youth Strategy itself concedes that “initiatives to transform the youth sector and youth reality tend to stay on a theoretical level”. […]

The rather abstract nature of the National Youth Strategy is reinforced by a striking absence of data, facts and figures. This is, of course, very problematic if there is a desire to build an evidence-based youth policy framework. […]

During both discussions and within the material scrutinised by the international review team, there was scarcely a mention of “youth work” or “non-formal education”. About the closest the National Youth Strategy comes to this is in its analysis of the weaknesses around civic education and democratic citizenship during the transition period arising from “the low level of co-operation among policy makers, teachers, parents, the community and civil society groups” (Ministry of Tourism, Culture, Youth and Sports 2006, p. 43). There is also hardly an infrastructure within which to locate such practice, even if the personnel were prepared, because of the decimation of public recreational spaces, open space, or places where young people might gather – spontaneously and informally - for “association”. We saw some, and heard about many more projects, but were not aware of structures that might have enabled such potential “youth work” practice. […]