My name is Saliona Kurti, I am 27 years old, I am currently studying as a hairdresser at a professional school where I got informed about a training that was organised by the Regional Development Agency Berat (RDA) in collaboration with GIZ Albania.

 

My experience with the training was fantastic, way beyond my expectations. The first thing I learned was the right mindset and attitude that we have to have before starting to learn something new, through excercies like meditation and feeling motivated.

 

The course made my thinking much more clear of how I can develop myself as a hairdresser to evolve from employed to finally opening up my own hair salon. Despite being young and using social media all the time, I never knew how I can effectively use them for business.

 

However the course of RDA Berat helped me understand the business basics as well as essential digital marketing skills. This means that I learned to design posters and beautiful graphics using canva which is essential for social media.

 

During the training I learned about social media analytics and promotions that can help elevate my future business. I understood how e-commerce works and how can I apply it to use it in my own profession in the future.

 

Also I learned a lot about organizing my business through digital skills. I learned that google offers a task list where I can write my daily tasks, google calendar on how I can manage the entire monthly events as well as appointments with clients. Google drive, helped me store all the essential documents that are needed in my business in the cloud as well as synchronizing everything via gmail.

 

To sum up, I really want to encourage other people my age to really understand how digitalization can help you elevate your future aspirations despite being an avid user of social media or smartphones.