ALSA UK In Theory and In Practice

By Arber Malaj

Empowerment was fueling through the air at our last installment of the EmpowerHer event, all organised by ALSA UK’s Denisa Lasku, where we heard from two great speakers, Adelina Toplica-Badivuku and Kristjana Nikolls. This was my first ALSA UK event that I attended and it was incredibly insightful to learn and understand more about these topics that we need to discuss more in the Albanian community. 

The event started off with a fireside chat with Adelina Toplica-Badivuku, who is a family therapist and active women’s advocate, moderated by Leonita Metaj, who asked many insightful questions that surrounded themes of female empowerment, gender equality and more. What I found really interesting was Adelina’s exploration of the word ‘e zonja’ which entered into Google translate, translates to the word ‘the lady’. She explained the cultural underpinnings of the word and how it reinforces gender inequalities. The word ‘e zonja’ is used to reward women who fit the stereotype of being good at domestic tasks, etc. She also reflected on how women are changing this definition of being ‘e zonja’; they are independent and strong. As an Albanian man, I found it to be very reflective and informing as whilst I may not experience this myself, we still need to educate ourselves to the reality that unfortunately happens. Through education, change can happen and Adelina left us all feeling empowered, encouraged and motivated to change this reality. She discussed how important it is for women to feel empowered in the workplace, that their voice matters. 

This conversation was complemented by Kristjana Nikolls, who is an Associate at Willkie Far and Gallagher. She offered a practical approach to self-advocacy in the workplace. She took Adelina’s theory into practice with a scenario based discussion. One example of a scenario she gave was: ‘You are the only woman in a meeting and when you speak, you feel like your contributions are being overlooked. What do you do?’ With this, there were many options ranging from asserting your voice that you’re being overlooked at the meeting or voicing your frustrations of being overlooked in private and it was really empowering to hear how many women would assert their voice because it matters. 

After this, we ended the event by networking and connecting with others. Being my first event at ALSA UK I got to experience networking for the first time. Before I had not known what networking really was and I had never gone to a networking event before. To be honest, I ignorantly assumed networking was just speaking to others to get a job but it truly is about learning and educating yourself from the wealth of knowledge all around you. 

I got the opportunity to hear and network with many people and learn from so many others’ experiences. It was honestly a really great experience and I loved hearing from so many and I was filled with pride. I was so proud to be in a room surrounded by strong empowered Albanians and it shows who Albanians are. The way that Albanians are portrayed throughout the media is far from who Albanians are and ALSA UK gives us the opportunity to show that. 

This event made me realise how great of a decision I made in registering for ALSA UK, the feeling of a community and the amount of support makes me so excited to see what future ALSA UK events there will be and there definitely will be many more events like this one to come. So, make sure you join ALSA UK as you will absolutely love it. 

Being the last event of the EmpowerHer series, we ended it in the best way possible and a huge thanks and appreciation goes to all those involved in making this possible. We really are making a change in our community and I am proud to be a part of that with ALSA UK.