Enhancing Montenegrin & Serbian Entrepreneurship and Tourism

Montenegro (ME) and Republic of Serbia (RS) are candidates for EU membership and by this they have also accepted a responsibility for its European future. EU accession process doesn’t end in harmonization of law systems, but the implementation of real structural and economical changes in their societies is needed. One of the mayor challenges would be education and training of youth population as an important factor for future growth and competitiveness. Young people are part of ME&RS population for which EU membership is especially important and who will gain most from it in the long therm. They will have to learn how to operate within EU economy system where they will have better chance for improvement but on the other hand they will face increased competition from EU market. Significant works have been done in the field of promotion and harmonization and EU membership has strong and stable support. It is the right time to work on strengthening ME&RS future capacities and raise it as close to EU level as possible. It takes time to make such structural changes and young population is a target group that has to be motivated and capable for it. At the same time tourism is most prospective industry of ME with substantial possibilities for SMEs and self-employment development, and the growing industry in RS as well. Thus, the main goal of our project is to educate and motivate young people to start their careers in tourism by fostering entrepreneurial mindset with the exchange of best practice and non formal learning mobility between WB region and highly experienced Program countries (Germany and Spain). The overall goal is expected to be achieved to the following objectives (O):O1- Strengthening of entrepreneurship among young populationO2- Development of core competencies in tourism; basic and specialized knowledge and skills trainings O3- Creating of Open Education Centre in Tourism with three main goals: a) career counseling, b) information sharing and spreading, c) open education platform with programs – business and tourismDevelopment of entrepreneurship in education system of ME&RS is in its infancy and current young population has clear and obvious lack of these skills, so the project will put additional effort on ensuring sustainability. Non-formal educational and training programs will be developed and will be responsible for continual information sharing, up-to-date communication and promotion, as well as open virtual training and education, all enhanced by modern technologies and educational platforms.Therefore this project embedded several innovative aspect: to include tourism orientation in entrepreneurship education, b) to address youth entrepreneurship motivation and mind-set, c) put accent on rural areas that are underdeveloped and facing depopulation, d) to include regional cross-border cooperation and e) to provide internationalization through sharing of EU best practice models and standards.