What are the main challenges that young people face when trying to find a job? What causes high unemployment rates among the young population and what can institutions, organizations and businesses do to address these causes? These and many other questions were discussed at the Regional Discussion Forum, held on June 22 in Skopje. The Forum was organized by the Center for Intercultural Dialogue and the Belgrade Open School.
The one-day conference gathered around 100 young people, representatives of youth organisations, governmental institutions and research centres from the Western Balkans region. The Regional Discussion Forum started with an introduction from Mila Josifovska from Center for Intercultural Dialogue and Milica Skiljevic from Belgrade Open School Zorica Stamenkovska from the Agency of Youth and Sports of R. Macedonia closed the introductory part with short conclusions from the recent research study on youth trends regarding employability, which was followed by the panel discussion and three working groups that explored how institutions, businesses, and youth organisations can contribute to raising the employability rates of youth in the region.
A lot of attention was given to the Regional Youth Employability Skills Portfolio, presented by Aleksandra Djurovic on behalf of the regional team of authors. The discrepancy between the skills demanded by the labour market and the skills that young people acquire through formal education was mentioned by every panel speaker – and the Portfolio showed the list of key skills that young people from Western Balkans need in order to successfully adapt to the changes in the labour market. Apart from the list of the most important transversal skills, the Portfolio includes the description of the good practice examples of programs for development of employability skills through youth work. It was concluded that it is necessary to foster regional cooperation of state institutions, business sector and youth organizations regarding youth employability.
As part of the panel discussion, Haris Huskic presented the activities of the Federal Employment Institute regarding this topic as well as examples of cooperation of employment services in the Western Balkans region which have been realized through activities of the Regional Cooperation Council. Moreover, Violeta Stojanovic presented the agenda of the Macedonian Agency for Employment, and emphasized the importance of strengthening the cooperation between relevant stakeholders on three levels: assisting youth in developing the skills that are demanded by the labour market, working towards adapting the education curricula to meet the constantly changing trends and needs of the market and cooperating closer with the business sector to balance the demand and the offer. ”Youth organisations are the perfect link to connect businesses and the young people”, said Ivona Krstevska from the National Youth Council of Macedonia (NYCM). She presented the initiatives that the NYCM is implementing at the moment in order to help young people develop soft skills and become competitive on the labour market.
The Regional Discussion Forum was the final event of the project ”WEBWORK: WEstern Balkan youth WORK(s) for youth Employability! – Regional initiative for a common approach to youth employability”, implemented by partners from six Balkan countries. The main aim of the project was to contribute to the adaptation of youth in the Western Balkans region to the rapidly evolving changes in the labour market.
Given the diversity of the participants at the conference, the forum presented itself as a great opportunity to share good practices on institutional and organizational level and to establish future cooperation. More information about the forum, as well as photos, discussion highlights and workshop results can be found here.
