Enhancing Youth Employment (EYE) is an SDC project implemented by HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation and Management Development Associates (MDA) in Kosovo. With the end of this year, it is completing its first four-year phase; the second phase will start in January 2017. The overall objective of the project is to contribute to more employment opportunities for young women and men,
focusing on three key labour market dimensions:
education, intermediation and job creation.
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Within the intermediation dimension, one of the key challenges young people in Kosovo face is the access to appropriate information that allows them to make better informed choices in regard to education and professional career paths. They are not aware of what the trends and requirements are on the labour market; their expectations do often not match the hard reality of a job market characterized by high youth unemployment, fierce competition and a volatile economic situation.
One underlying cause is the fact that mass media in Kosovo does not provide the type of labour market information accessible to youth in Western Europe. These are not only programmes with informative character (e.g. reports and documentaries about certain professions, news about trends and requirements of employers, information about different education channels), but also entertainment shows that aim at changing perceptions and attitudes. Think of 'Dragons Den' or 'The Apprentice' – both TV shows that aim at promoting a culture of entrepreneurship respectively working culture.
The EYE project therefore aims at changing the role of mass media in the labour market. One of the shows it has supported is called
PunPun ('Work-Work'), broadcasted on a local TV station. Young candidates compete against each other for a job. The 'edutainment' approach of the TV channel allows viewers to learn more about how to prepare for the job market. After a successful first season, the TV channel is now planning a second season without project support (the show attracts sponsors by advertisement placed around it); other channels are following the example with new formats.
Changing the role of media in the labour market is one intervention of several under the intermediation dimension – others include promoting career guidance at VET school level, changing business and service models of online job portals, or improving linkages of the public employment services to the private sector. Together with interventions under the education and job creation dimension (or ‘outcomes’) EYE aims at comprehensive and systemic changes in the youth labour market, which in the meanwhile have benefitted more than 12,000 young women and men in Kosovo.
PunPun has attracted some media attention: after being published in HELVETAS'
Partnerschaft, and SDC's
Eine Welt, it was also mentioned in an SRF radio show. Recently 10vor10 on SRF TV devoted a
documentary to the EYE project intervention. Media coverage in Switzerland is important for SDC, in the light of the current (critical) public debate about development cooperation and related funding. More such articles are needed in order to influence public discourse, requiring active collaboration with media and accepting that journalists are independent and therefore bring their own view.
We do believe that the 10vor10 documentary captures the project intervention well: it has a clear positive message, shows an innovative approach of Swiss development cooperation and as such helps to sustain political and public support.
For those that are interested in learning more about the role of media in the labour market and who would like to understand the role of a development project in facilitating changes: the
RisiAlbania project (also an SDC project implemented by HELVETAS and Partners Albania) is about to publish a case study written by Gavin Anderson, an independent consultant. More news on this soon.
