MAPPING OF THE POPULATION AT RISK OF STATELESSNESS IN ALBANIA A proper response to all these concerns, dictated the structure of the methodology. In order to identify as many persons at risk of statelessness as possible in Albania, TLAS engaged closely with the state structures that are in contact with the stateless individuals, such as Social Services Structures, Child Protection Units, Regional Directories of Education, Regional Directories of Health, Civil Status Offices in all territories, NGOs, civil society organisations (CSOs) and community based organizations (CBOs), grassroots organizations, etc. Given the covert nature of statelessness – after all the phenomenon is defined as rendering people legally “invisible” – a probability sampling technique would not have been viable to collect data. Hence, using pre-existing relationships with the public structures, TLAS conducted a convenience sampling technique to collect as much data as possible in a limited amount of time. For this reason, TLAS distributed questionnaires – handed over either directly or through the established networks − to all the structures mentioned above, to share information on the identified persons at risk of stateless. The questionnaire collected data regarding the number of persons at risk of stateless that were pinpointed by a certain structure, each individual personal name (or relatives’ names) and demographic (age, gender, residing administrative units) background, the reasons behind the non-registration, and consequences of the lack of status (limited access to healthcare, education, economic aid, etc.). Before the distribution of the questionnaires, TLAS deemed necessary the provision of training sessions with the staff responsible for filling out the questionnaires. First, a draft version of the questionnaire was compiled and used as a pilot test with the relevant structures. Then, TLAS held four meetings, involving more than 200 people, to inform them of the importance of preventing statelessness and ways to fill out the questionnaires, and to discuss concerns and feedback that they had with the pilot questionnaire. Any concerns were reflected in the final form of questionnaire. The calendar of these meetings is shown in the table below: The involvement of public structures in the mapping project did not serve only to identify cases of persons at risk of statelessness but also to raise awareness within the relevant institutions. Hence, this project will, hopefully, also work as a first step in increasing the capacity of public entities regarding this problem. TLAS also instructed the trainees to use snowball sampling methods to maximize the number of identified cases of persons at risk of statelessness. 16 UNHCR - TLAS / May 2018