Author: WeBalkans

The 60 Young European Ambassadors from across the Western Balkan region took part in EXIT Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia from 7 to 11 July and introduced themselves and the YEA Network to the young people attending the festival.

As a special part of the programme dedicated to youth, the Young European Ambassadors presented their activities and sent a message on the importance of youth participation in society, through activism, creativity, cultural dialogue and cooperation. Young European Ambassadors also participated in a workshop on the Conference on the Future of Europe together with their peers and organised a Fake News Hunt game to raise awareness on media literacy.  In addition, the manager of both Young European Ambassadors, Selena Tasic and OPENS, Vukasin Grozdanovic, along with the Representative of the EU Delegation to Serbia, representatives of the City of Novi Sad and the president of EXIT Foundation Ivan Petrovic addressed the audience at the occasion of the presentation of these two important youth networks.

The Young European Ambassadors initiative is part of the WeBalkans project within the EU Regional Communication Programme for the Western Balkans. OPENS is an Association whose task is to implement a series of activities, projects, programs, events, initiatives together with its partners in order to open doors for the transfer of energy, knowledge, experience and information in order to strengthen the capacities of young people.

EXIT Foundation is part of the EXIT Festival team that focuses on social activism. EXIT is a music festival, which came into existence as a result of youth social activism, thus becoming the core of the festival itself that EXIT founders never separate from the music spectacle it stands for.

The Western Balkans Youth Forum, organised as part of the Berlin Summit 2021, concluded on Monday 5 July 2021. The event brought together over 100 young people and decision-makers from the region and the European Union to discuss the current situation of youth in the region and how to improve their position and lives. A number of selected Young European Ambassadors – a creative network of future game-changers established in 2020 under the EU Regional Communication Programme for the Western Balkans – participated and co-chaired working groups.

The participants discussed key challenges and topics such as reconciliation and peacebuilding, volunteering, new skills for the future, sustainable development, shifting “brain drain” to “brain gain” and how to increase youth participation. These discussions and conclusions are now formulated in the event’s final product – the Regional Youth Agenda.

The young people participating in the forum underlined that the recommendations presented in the Regional Youth Agenda should be developed and implemented through co-creation and co-management principles and with strong youth participation at national and regional levels. Furthermore, they recommended that special attention should be paid to the inclusion of vulnerable groups and youth from poorly developed areas in the region.

The final event of the EU-funded PowerUP programme, which supports innovative SMEs and start-up companies from the Western Balkans, took place on 29 June 2021. The event was marked by an awards ceremony to announce the winners of the “Western Balkans Entrepreneurial Excellence Award”. Eleven finalist companies had the opportunity to pitch their businesses in front of eminent investors from the region, with the three winners selected by a professional jury.

In first place was the company Dwelt,  an Bosnian IT company and the only startup with its own technology product in the field of energy in Bosnia and Herzegovina. NF Innova from Serbia, which focuses on digital banking and the provision of services to financial institutions, took second place. Blinking from Serbia with a focus and expertise in building and developing digital identity, identity verification, and user data protection securing third.

The programme was launched by the World Bank in November 2020 and is funded by the EU under the Western Balkans Enterprise Development and Innovation Facility (WB EDIF), with leading consulting company, Deloitte, supporting its implementation. The 11 finalists, along with over 200 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, benefitted from training over several months to support their further growth and business development. This included learning about how to find and attract investment and cultivate crisis resilience in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The winners will be provided with additional tailored business advisory support from experts of the leading professional services company, Deloitte.