Tim za socijalno uključivanje i smanjenje siromaštva

The Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction Unit of the Government of the Republic of Serbia issued a call for awarding grants under a public competition entitled “Support to Innovative Approaches for Increasing Youth Employment and Employability”. The public call was implemented under the programme “Education to Employability” (E2E), its implementation financially supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

The commission for the evaluation of project proposals, comprised of representatives of the Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Youth and Sports, the E2E programme, financial sector and the Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction Unit, made a decision on the selection of the best candidates to be supported in implementing their project ideas.

The call was opened for all associations and civil society organizations (head applicants) registered with the Business Registers Agency and acting within the territory of the Republic of Serbia, through mandatory cooperation with private sector representatives (partner organization) during the period 10 May to 9 July 2017.

Candidates could apply for three different support models:

1. Support for early development of innovative approaches to youth employment in order to develop an idea that better responds to a problem in the community up to a phase where it can be piloted/implemented
2. Support for the improvement of innovative approaches to youth employment, in order for an innovative solution that was developed to be applied, or if it is already being implemented to further improve it (by developing those segments that were shown as necessary based on the lessons learned during implementation)
3. Support to growth and expansion, and/or scaling of innovative approaches to youth employment that were shown to be successful in practice.

A total of 55 civil society organizations applied for the call in cooperation with the private sector, with the greatest number of candidates opting for support model no. 2 (36 project proposals, or over 70% of candidates. The least number of candidates opted for the third model of support (6 proposals), while there were 13 applications for support model no. 1.

The evaluation criteria for the project proposals were:

• Relevance of the project proposal (18 points)
• Quality and clarity of the project proposal (20 points)
• Quality of the proposed budget (20 points)
• Project sustainability: to what extent are the results of the project sustainable after the expiry of financing, regarding various models of support (15 points)
• Quality of the monitoring and evaluation plan of the project (12 points)
• Capacity of candidates and partners for project implementation (15 points)
• Public presentations (10 points)

The Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction Unit hereby, on behalf of the Commission, congratulates the winners of the call, thanks all the candidates for their participation and encourages the remaining participants to keep following our activities.

Download the full ranking list of all applicants to the public call.