British Albanian Kosovar Council started as Albanian Youth Action in 1998, to work with unaccompanied minors from Albania and Kosova, providing housing, education and leisure projects. The children and young people were coming to the UK as a result of war and unrest in the region.

We ran a wide variety of youth work, including arts, photography, drama, film making as well as sports and dance. AYA also worked with ethnic Albanian families to offer an advice service, and cultural language and dance projects for young children.

By 2006, the unaccompanied Albanian children  were no longer coming into the UK in any significant numbers, and the organisation changed emphasis to work with refugee families and their children, and was renamed British Albanian Kosovar Council (BAKC).

We are funded by the Big Lottery to run the Strengthening Families Strengthening Communities program, which is a sophisticated parenting program devised by Race Equality Foundation, and aims to support parenting across cultures.  We also run youth activities for the children of the parents who attend the program.