Approved projects in target municipalities

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Press release

Official ceremony of the mini-grant award to the local youth initiatives within the IOM project “Strengthening Serbia’s Human Capital through the Active Involvement of Young People”

Thanks to the contribution of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Italy, IOM Serbia has been able to implement the project “Strengthening Serbia’s Human Capital through the Active Involvement of Young People” – SHAPE in partnership with the Ministry of Youth and Sport and local self-governments in target municipalities: Subotica, Zrenjanin, Nova Crnja, Sremska Mitrovica, Kragujevac, Svilajnac, Uzice, Ivanjica, Pirot and Sokobanja.

Theproject is among the first initiatives implemented in the partnership with the Serbian Ministry of Youth and Sport as a support to the implementation of the National Youth Strategy.

Throughout the past eighteen months of its implementation, the SHAPE project has successfully progressed towards its main objective – which is to enhance the capacities of the Ministry of Youth and Sport and local self-governments to promote the socio-cultural and economic integration of young people. The main priority is to strengthen active participation of youth in the construction of cohesive society and community.

The project has achieved significant results, as it has firmly anchored and enhanced the impact of youth offices locally as recognized stakeholders. In addition, a special youth workshop program which is organized in youth offices has been prepared in accordance with the youth needs, following the exhaustive youth needs assessment conducted at the very beginning of the project implementation. As of June, 2009 up to now, 110 workshops and seminars have been organized which were attended by more than 2, 000 young people.

Mini-grants were awarded to youth mini-projects on 8 April, 2010 at the Palace of Serbia. The mini-grants funding amounts to RSD 1.4 million in total and is available for the selected projects from 10 target municipalities which participated in the Call for project proposals. In total 56 organizations submitted their project proposals out of which only 10 projects were selected for funding. All selected projects are to be implemented between 15 April, 2010 and 15 November, 2010, after which the second round of Call for youth project proposals is to be announced.

The representatives of local self-governments, youth offices coordinators and representatives of youth organizations whose projects were selected for funding attended the ceremony. Snezana Samardzic Markovic, Minister of Youth and Sport, H.E.   Armando Varricchio, Ambassador of Italy to Serbia, Gregoire Goodstein, IOM Serbia Chief of Mission and Lidija Markovic, IOM project manager, addressed the audience.