According to a survey from 2018/19, 74.6% of Montenegrin youth thinks that the education system is not in line with the needs of the labour market, while an almost identical percentage, i.e., 75%, said that unemployment is their most prominent fear.
The gap that exists between formal education and the needs of the labour market is nothing new. Not in our country, nor in the countries of the region. This should serve as a reminder that we should all be working together to improve the conditions in which our young people will develop. Our youth’s biggest fear should be the dilemma of whether to start their own business or stay at their current job.
In addition to the fact that we have been implementing the Domain.ME School of Programming project for 11 years, together with our partner, the Faculty of Science of the University of Montenegro, intended for primary and secondary school students interested in programming, this year we have decided to offer educational content and new opportunities to university students as well.
What will we offer to university students and how?
In February of this year, Domain.ME became the official partner of the European Youth Card (EYCA) – a project implemented in partnership with the Directorate of Sports and Youth and the NGO Centre for Youth Education.
The card, which all young people aged 13 to 29 can get for free, allows them to get discounts at over 200 locations in Montenegro and at more than 70,000 locations in 37 European countries. The goal of the project is to enable young people to get products and services at a lower price in their respective countries and abroad, thus helping them to use their budget in a more efficient way.
Since most Montenegrin youth has either heard about the card and is actively using it, we decided to organize educational lectures in cooperation with EYCA as our partner, which will enable the youth to learn and develop new skills.
The topics we will cover during these lectures will mainly focus on new labour market trends. We will talk with young people about digital skills, future occupations, non-formal education and how they can use the online world to find a job.
It was important to us that the lectures were in no way restricted – that they were accessible to all young people at any time, therefore we decided to record and publish interviews with renowned lecturers and experts on the EYCA YouTube channel, as a lasting and useful resource available to young people.
The first lecture, on the topic of Occupations of the Future, will be published in mid-March. From then onwards, a new lecture will be available each month. In this way, young people will be able to watch lectures whenever suitable for them, and use the gained knowledge when reflecting on what they can do for their career and their future.
The Role of Domain.ME
As a company, we care very much about empowering the local community. We see our role in that empowerment mostly through educating young people, because they are the ones who will change the world one day.
For that reason, over the years, we have been making efforts to bring areas such as programming, robotics, startups and online business closer to young people and make those areas more accessible to them. We are pleased because over 1,000 children attended the School of Programming, and the competition FIRST LEGO League is being organized for more than 7 years now, thanks to which children can get acquainted with the basics of robotics in elementary school.
Global trends clearly state: the digital world is the future, and online business will be the main source of income. In addition, according to the research we did in July last year, the pandemic accelerated the digitalisation process and made it even more clear to all of us. Compared to 2019, there was an increase in both the number of websites with .ME domain, as well as the number of e-commerce websites. A piece of information that will be especially interesting to young people is that the number of those who use .ME web sites as their personal blogs has increased by 14.90%.
The pandemic has visibly changed our lives and habits, both in the online and offline world. Note that Charles Darwin pointed out a long time ago how important it is to adapt to change and feel free to apply that in this field as well, because the sooner we adapt to change and respond to it, the more successful we will be.
One of the ways to aid the community through times like these is by forming new partnerships, such as the one with the EYCA card. Our warmest recommendations to all young people is to follow the websites www.omladinskakartica.me and www.stemedukacija.me , in order to take advantage of all the opportunities we will provide in the future.
This article is part of the socially responsible business of the Domain.ME company, which has for years been making efforts to bring the internet and new technologies closer to Montenegrin society, especially to young people. In 2019, our company launched the web portal www.stemedukacija.me, where you can find out about all the free opportunities that our company provides to the young people in Montenegro.
