Youth Empowerment

YOUTH IN THE DECIDE PROJECT

The DECIDE project’s target group are young people ages 15 to 35, more specifically, students of secondary vocational schools participating in the project and the unemployed youth from the following 6 local self-governments: Subotica, Obrenovac, Kragujevac, Zaječar, Niš and Vlasotince.

In close cooperation with selected schools, local self-government, non-governmental organisations, companies and other local actors, the project supports the youth in identifying and seizing education and employment opportunities.

YOUTH SUPPORT MEASURES

Career Guidance and Counselling

In strengthening their competencies for creating, improving and implementing youth career guidance and counselling activities and programmes, the Projects supports schools’ career guidance and counselling teams. The project also lends assistance in linking selected secondary vocational schools with relevant local actors so they can jointly create and better implement career guidance and counselling services.

The students, through career guidance and counselling activities implemented at the school, have the opportunity to evaluate their motives, interests, values and abilities and learn how and where to look for information about future education, occupations and their demand in the labour market, and to partake in real encounters with the world of work to test out and through practice work get an adequate impression about certain occupations. The described support allows students to become aware and assume personal responsibility and independently make informed decisions about their future education and career.

Special attention is devoted to providing primary school graduates and their parents with information about dual education profiles and work-based learning, and the opportunities in terms of continuing one’s education and finding a job that the dual education affords.

In their personal and professional development, in addition to students within the formal secondary vocational education system, the project also lends support to the youth in the labour market through different activities, such as providing information on the labour market needs and training opportunities, active job search, delivering knowledge and skills important for career management and lifelong learning, networking with employers and encouraging entrepreneurship.

Girls’ Day

“Girls’ Day” is an international event established at the level of United Nations and dedicated to overcoming gender-specific stereotypes related to work and occupation. “Girls’ Day” event, as a career guidance and counselling activity, is being celebrated every fourth Thursday in April.

The aim of this event is to introduce girls to occupations in which women are traditionally less represented, in order to expand knowledge and awareness of career choices and to empower them to be guided in this process by personal interests, abilities and talents, not stereotypical division into “male” and “female” occupations.

“Girls’ Day” event is organised locally in towns and municipalities throughout the country as real encounters between girls with successful women in positions and occupations that are not considered typical for women.

Short-Term Skills Training

The selected secondary vocational schools are to receive project support in developing and improving their capacities to organise and implement non-formal short-term skills trainings for the unemployed youth in local communities. The initiative is to help youth gain skills in occupations sought after in the labour market, consequently easing their way into employment.

Youth Participation, Peer Learning, Entrepreneurship

The project supports active involvement and participation of both students and youth. With that in mind, the best practice examples in active youth participation along with civil society organisations and non-formal youth groups in municipalities where selected schools are located were analysed and overviewed. The key aspects of support for students in schools and youth in the community were identified to improve cooperation potential.  The project seeks to establish direct communication with the youth, primarily through social networks, and to motivate and encourage them to take an active role in defining solutions to the challenges they face in education, training and employment. The plan, among others, is to improve the functioning of the student parliament, to support peer learning, entrepreneurial skills growth and independent students’ projects.