Serbia

LOCAL SKILLS MATTER Serbia

A study of good practice in the application of territorial governance tools to VET in Serbia, undertaken as part of the Entrepreneurial Communities initiative.

Short description:

In 2013, as part of its work on multilevel VET governance, the ETF launched its Entrepreneurial Communities initiative to identify and acknowledge local partnerships that foster skills, entrepreneurship and job creation. The goal was to explore and learn from examples in partner countries, in order to understand how these partnerships are formed, the impact they can have on communities and how they can inform VET policy.

This Serbian entrepreneurial community provides an example of the power of a grassroots initiative to build trust and, through creating a complex network of horizontal and vertical relations, encourage collaboration and break administrative boundaries in a push to implement adult education. This community is located in the town and municipality of Mionica (with populations of 1 500 and 14 000 respectively), where the economy is tourism-led, targeting mainly weekend and holiday season visitors from Belgrade. The partnership involves four main actors – Radojicic farm, as leader of the initiative; the municipality of Mionica; Kreativa, a network for local teachers and policy makers concerned with the development of education in the Mionica region; and Mionica High School, a vocationally oriented high school – and is focused on the development of the Magical Village, an outdoor play-and-learning centre with an experiential curriculum of agricultural and environmental themes. Serving as a model for a new form of educational tourism for the region, this project has also become the venue for a wider range of adult education and training initiatives. Furthermore, by creating added value from limited resources through linking actors and binding them into collective action, these activities have created pressure to change the law so that local partnerships may be allowed to implement formal education for young rural women who have not finished high school. The experience is sparking cross-regional learning and partnership as the community connects to other municipalities and shares the lessons learned.

You may read the document below and see the video here.