Eglentina Gjermeni, who earned her Master's of Social Work degree from GVSU in 1998, is now a professor at the University of Tirana, Albania. In addition to teaching, Gjermeni works as a counselor for abused women. She has also been deeply involved in establishing non-governmental organizations to help women in Albania and Kosovo.
Gjermeni recently helped establish a women's center in Tirana, and she coordinated a project to provide psycho-social support for traumatized ethnic Albanian women in refugee camps in Pristina, Kosovo.
I love this work, Gjermeni says. It's amazing to see how strong these women are, how strong their survival mechanisms are, and how motivated they are to affect change.
Gjermeni also trains groups of women to establish women's centers and to raise public awareness about domestic violence, prostitution, and trafficking of women and girls in Eastern Europe. She recently attended the United Nations conference on international women's issues in New York.
