25 Feb The final event – a study visit within the CBC job gender and age equalizer
25.02.2025
Today, a study visit began in Skopje, as a joint final event of the partners in the project Bridging the gender and age gap on the labour market through capacity building and promotion of new job opportunities in cross border region – CBC job gender and age equalizer.
The project, which lasts a year and a half, is implemented by the Association of Business Women in Serbia (ABW Serbia) as a leading partner, together with the Association of Business Women Vranje (ABW Vranje) and partners from North Macedonia, the Foundation for Management and Industrial Research (MIR) and the association Pravedni i profesionali.
The event was attended by project participants from Serbia and North Macedonia, as well as representatives of local communities, Trgovište Municipality President Nataša Manasijević and Gjorče Petrov Municipality President Aleksandar Stojkoski, who signed the Memorandum on cross-border cooperation on this occasion. Also present were representatives of secondary vocational schools from Serbia and North Macedonia, whose final grade students attended training sessions within the project with great interest, as well as employers – representatives of the companies Knauf and Ukras and representatives of the National Employment Service. An agreement on cross-border cooperation was also signed between the Secondary Vocational School “Milutin Bojić” from Trgovište and the Vocational Technical School “Zdravko Cvetkovski” from Skopje.
After the opening speeches of the mayors of Trgovište and Gjorča Petrov, as well as the executive director of the MIR Foundation, Gabriela Kostovska Bogoeska, the audience was addressed by Dragana Panajotović, executive director of the Association of Business Women in Serbia, Tijana Milovanović, president of the Association of Business Women Vranje, and Tinka Kiteska, president of the association Pravedni i profesionalni. The activities carried out and realized on the project were presented by Mia Botinova Dimitrova, communications officer, which was followed by a panel discussion on the topic Institutional support for unemployed women and youth: opportunity in entrepreneurship, education and local development. Ivana Genov, pedagogue at a technical school from Vranje, Milan Stojković, director of “Milutin Bojić” Secondary Vocational School from Trgovište, Sonja Palčevska Kjoseva, head of the Public Affairs Department of Gjorče Petrov municipality, Daniela Dimovska, director of the Agency for Promotion of Entrepreneurship of the Republic of North Macedonia, and Jasminka Boševa, director of “Zdravko Cvetkovski” Vocational Secondary School from Skopje, participated in the panel. At the end of the first day, short peer to peer meetings, exchange of experiences and networking of the participants were held. Workshops are planned for the second day on the topic of Improving public policies and communication strategies to encourage intersectoral cooperation for greater employment opportunities for women and young people.
The idea of starting this project is to empower women, young people, as well as vulnerable groups of women for the labor market, in order to be more successfully involved in the sectors of construction, metalworking and information and communication technologies, which are better paid, but are predominantly represented by men. More than 500 participants in two countries participated in trainings and accompanying activities, mentoring work was organized with the most successful among them, as well as visits to companies in the field, so that they could see on the spot what they heard about during the trainings. In addition, recommendations were made for the further implementation of the goals of this project, a series of 10 podcasts was recorded with successful female entrepreneurs who run businesses in the so-called male sectors, memorandums of understanding and cooperation between the most important actors in the two countries were signed, as well as cross-border agreements, a website and an application were launched to make information about activities and the labor market as accessible as possible.
The project, which lasts until the end of March 2025, is co-financed by the European Union within the financial instrument of pre-accession assistance (IPA II) through the Cross-Border Cooperation Program Serbia – North Macedonia 2016-2020. The contract for co-financing with the funds of the European Union was signed with the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Serbia – Sector for contracting and financing of programs from the funds of the European Union.