Youth and Gender
YOUTH COMPONENT
Internship program
USAID Agribusiness Project, within its Youth Program, recognized the need for connecting companies with high school and Agriculture Faculty students, through its internship program.
Internship program enables students to enrich knowledge which they gain in schools with a work experience within selected companies during the summer break.
Advantages for students:
- Observation and participation in modern business processes and possibility to use gained knowledge in a real working environment
- Acquiring intellectual, technical and life skills
- Understanding why some school classes are so important for future work.
- Learning how to use office equipment necessary for modern business
- Practicing interaction with employees, as a very important aspect of their future professional life
- Earning allowance
If you’re willing to participate and try the advantages of this program, please submit your CV to milos_stojanovic@agrobiznis.net
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One segment of the USAID Agribusiness project is the YOUTH PROGRAM which is mainly focused on education of high school and agriculture faculty students, so that they are able to recognize true values of agribusiness and to find entrepreneurship opportunities in agribusiness. For this purpose the Project has organized extra curriculum activities with the goal of promoting entrepreneurial knowledge in 25 agriculture high schools throughout Serbia.
Two most important components of the Youth Program are:
- Youth Business Plan Competition and
- Internship Program.
The Business Plan Competition
Purpose of this competition is to stimulate, inform and encourage young people to participate in agribusiness. By supporting new generations of farmers, USAID Agribusiness Project is trying to create new jobs and to increase incomes in local communities.
So far, this competition has been held twice and 16 best business plans written by young people from all parts of Serbia have been awarded. The applicants had plans for initiating or improving their existing small businesses, and the Agribusiness Project team has been helping students in the process of making and preparing the best possible business plans.
The value of each individual agribusiness plan submitted for competition is up to $15.000. The competition winners are also provided with all the necessary technical assistance from the USAID Agribusiness Project to further develop their business ideas, to enter and establish themselves on the market and to link with interested private and public sector companies.
Contact person for the Youth component: Ivana Janićijevic
GENDER COMPONENT
Women in rural parts of Serbia are very important for agricultural development and sustainability, but despite that fact, they have very little knowledge about the possibilities and benefits offered nowadays by agribusiness.
The project entitled Women Entrepreneurs in Agribusiness was launched in February 2009 with the goal to promote entrepreneurship among women living in rural parts of Serbia, encouraging them to take active participation in the improvement of their economic position and self-employment.
In late October 2011, the training program for Women Entrepreneurs in Agribusiness was finalized with a certificate award ceremony for women whose business plans were best rated. Eleven women were awarded grants totaling US$150,000 to launch their own agribusinesses. The competition represents the last phase of the program aimed to support women in agribusiness which lasted from October 2010 to April 2011.
The start-up grants will enable women entrepreneurs to launch businesses in a variety of pursuits, including milk processing and the cultivation and processing of fruits, vegetables and medicinal herbs. Awardees are among 300 women who completed an agribusiness training course organized by the USAID Agribusiness Project as part a program to promote entrepreneurship among rural women. The Women Entrepreneurs Program has held training sessions in Leskovac , Kragujevac, Čačak Kraljevo , Valjevo, Užice Šabac , Niš, Gadžin Han , Prokuplje , Zaječar, Pirot and Bor .
A further step towards providing support to women in agribusiness is to pair them with the relevant institutions that also provide support both to women and to all entrepreneurs in agriculture, in order to find financial resources to implement their business ideas. A signed Memorandums of Understanding between the City of Nis and USAID Agribusiness Project and between the Office for Sustainable Development of Underdeveloped Areas and the USAID Agribusiness Project resulted in funding for five other women entrepreneurs and their business plans developed during the training program. The Office for Sustainable Development of Underdeveloped Areas financially supported three business ideas of women from Lebane, Gadzin Han and Knic, while the City of Nis supported business plans of two women who live and work in the territory of the City of Nis.
The next step in supporting women in agribusiness is a training program for women who live and work in the municipalities Novi Pazar, Sjenica and Tutin. This program will be jointly implemented by the USAID Agribusiness Project and Office for Sustainable Development of Underdeveloped Areas. Training program will be held in Novi Pazar in the period December 2011 to February 2012. As part of the training, women will learn the basics of entrepreneurship and business plan writing. After the training, the women will have an opportunity to apply for grants funded by the Office for Sustainable Development of Underdeveloped Areas which has allocated funds for 10 business plans developed by the women from these three municipalities.
