Municipality of Stip and USAID today with a beginning at 11:00 in the hotel Oaza in Stip held a presentation of the project: “Youth network for gaining skills for employment”.

The project aims to help young people to gain skills for employment, which will actively engage in the labor market. The project covers groups of young people at the age of 16 until 27, and as target groups: students in the High schools, unemployed and who are registered at the centers of employment and unemployment, but are not registered in the Agency for Employment.

- The Municipality of Stip supports any project or initiative that would allow reduction of unemployment, especially at the young people, and to turn them from active waiters for work in active jobseekers. In this way they can choose a profession and can create their own future alone – said at the promotion of the project, the Mayor of Stip, Zoran Aleksov PhD.

On the meeting have participated more institutions, representatives from the High schools, the University of Stip, the private sector, the Chamber of Commerce, regional offices of education and others.

- USAID in Macedonia through JEC network so far have trained 220 facilitators for implementing the program for preparing for employment. Of these 173 are teachers in the High schools, 4 are counselors, 19 are representatives of NGO, 15 are employed in AVRM and 9 are representatives of the private agencies of employment. With a great pleasure we also include Stip in this project and we expect great results and fruitful cooperation – said Jan Karpovich, director of the project.

The project officially started to be implemented on the 30^th of September 2010 and will run over the next five years, until 2015 and the total value of it is 7.6 million dollars. Among the objectives envisaged equipping of carrier centers in high schools with complete equipment worth around 5000 euros and operating clubs in employment centers. Apart from Stip and Prilep are joining in the project involved three other municipalities: Tetovo, Bitola and Strumica.