All countries of the Western Balkans share similar problems in terms of youth unemployment and the share of youth who are outside of employment and education. Around a quarter of youth in the Western Balkans are NEETs – neither in employment, education or training (2019). Moreover, out of the total registered unemployed at the end of February 2021, 173,031 are young people under 24 years, which is more than 12% of all registered unemployed.
According to the Western Balkans Civil Society Forum. Policy Brief 3/2019, “labor market measures do not make distinctions between youth in rural and urban areas, or young men and women’s needs, without which policies fail to clearly and effectively address unemployment. The demand side for labor expresses dissatisfaction with the supply of skilled individuals”.
Small and medium sized companies are considered key to employment in the Western Balkans and the EU has recently recognised this with a 10 million EUR programme to boost youth employment in SME under the ‘EU for Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship’ programme implemented under the Western Balkans Enterprise Development and Innovation Facility.
Entrepreneurship among youth in the region remains insufficiently tackled, both through systems of education, employment policies and cross-sectoral cooperation.
In this context, the 2019 EU-funded paper “Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship -Key Policy Challenges in The Western Balkans” has identified a range of key challenges for youth entrepreneurship, amongst others those are:
- Youth in Western Balkan countries are apprehensive about starting their own business and taking risks, and afraid of failure.
- Lack of funds and difficulties in securing funding are among the most common limitations to launching a business.
- Current entrepreneurial infrastructure and mentorship are still in the developing phase.
- When it comes to business incubators, they should focus more on supporting and encouraging simple, common and traditional business ideas as more realistic ones, instead of requesting innovative business ideas of their users
Project aim and objectives
Against this background the project aims to strengthen the quality and recognition of youth entrepreneurship education in the Western Balkans through multi-stakeholder cross-sectoral cooperation for youth employability.
Accordingly, the project pursues the following objectives:
- To innovate a quality blended entrepreneurship education programmes for young people
- To foster multi-stakeholder cross-sectoral cooperation among public authorities, CSOs and the private sector for youth employability
- To promote entrepreneurial take-up and entrepreneurship education among young people
Project target group
The project targets young people and a range of private and public stakeholders working in the field of youth employability.
The project particularly focuses on young NEETs living in rural and secondary urban centres in Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Secondly, the project aims at a variety of public and private stakeholders including:
- Civil society organisations, youth NGOs, and umbrella organisations working on youth employability and youth entrepreneurship
- Public authorities on local and national level working on youth employability such as municipal youth departments, employment services and educational stakeholders
- Private companies, business entities, and the start-up and entrepreneurship ecosystem