How to support youth employment in a sustainable way? Which data are relevant to the process of policymaking in the area of youth employment and employability in the Western Balkans region? How to enhance the cooperation between public institutions, business sector and civil society organizations in this area? These and many other questions were discussed at the first Regional Forum on Youth Employment held in Skopje on 20th and 21st of June 2018.
The Regional Forum was organized by the National Youth Council of Macedonia and Belgrade Open School, within the regional project "Western Balkan Civil Society Organizations for Youth Employment Support – WeB4YES”. The Forum was organized with the aim to contribute to tackling common challenges in the area of youth employment and strengthen the cooperation of relevant stakeholders. The Forum gathered more than 70 representatives of public institutions, business sector and civil society organizations dealing with employability issues and youth employment from the Western Balkans region.
During the first day of the Forum, two panel discussions were held. The first panel was dedicated to presenting initiatives, experiences and good practice examples in tackling youth unemployment challenge at the European, regional, national and local level. Within the second panel, the topics were the evidence-informed policymaking in the area of youth employment and the drafts of the Regional report on youth employability and the Regional report on active labour market measures dedicated to youth were discussed. The second day of the Forum was dedicated to interactive parallel sessions on youth employability measures and active labour market measures, whose aim was to create recommendations in this area at the regional and national level.
The project coordinator is Belgrade Open School, and partners in the project are Association for Democratic Prosperity - ZID (Montenegro), Lens (Kosovo), Association Beyond Barriers (Albania), Institute for Youth Development - KULT (Bosnia and Herzegovina), National Youth Council of Macedonia and Olof Palme International Center (Sweden).
The WEB4YES project will last from December 2017 to December 2020 and is supported by the European Union.
