Belgrade Open School, together with young people, celebrated the second time in a row International Intern’s Day on November 9, 2018. The event was organized within the "Quality Internships - the Way to Youth Employability" with the support of Solidar Suisse. Event is also supported by Serbia Youth Umbrella Organization.
The celebration started with a creative artistic performance of actors from Organization of Creative Grouping" – OOCG. They have shown in the satiric and comic way everyday situation interns are dealing with during the internship like making coffee or bringing burek. The performance was held in front of the Faculty of Philosophy. After performance participants went to the Republic Square, symbolically with the coffee, protesting at the same time to attract the attention of the people in the streets. People in the streets have joined to performance and in this way learned more about the intern's problems.
The position of young people on the Serbian labor market is unenviable, characterized by a high unemployment rate and a difficult transition from education to the labor market. To get their first job, young people need to have contacts in the corporative sector, and work experience, both can be gained during internships.
However, it often happens that they get into a vicious circle, where they move from one internship to another without job prospects. Besides, many internships do not fulfill their primary purpose, which is learning through the work, training, and development of skills relevant to employment.
Research in Serbia has shown that young people have positive attitudes towards an internship, but that even 50% of young people were in a program of a non-mentoring internship program, 77% took part in a non-contractual internship program, and even 90% of the interns were not paid. Such data is not surprising given the findings of the Belgrade Open School analysis, which indicate that there is no adequate contractual form in Serbia for regulating the relationship between those who are offering internship program and interns and that there are no mechanisms for ensuring the quality of internship.