INVESTING IN YOUTH, EDUCATION AND SKILLS

The program area is relatively young and faces challenges such as: lack of employment opportunities, limited access to education and attaining of skills, health issues and insufficient ability to impact policy making and gender mainstreaming in all levels in education. Education specifically remains one of the major priorities in the programming area. It requires reform, including teacher training, quality assurance measures, transparency, and practical learning experiences. There is a need to orient the education system towards market demands, to enable its contribution towards increasing market competitiveness and improving citizens’ lives. Therefore, this priority is ranked third to be addressed by the programme, with the aim to empower youth and promote education and skills in the cross-border area. This will be achieved through promotion of youth empowerment, through self-employment initiatives, start-up businesses, exchanges and networking, state-of-the-art technology, organising youth exchange programs, supporting youth networking activities such as sports tournaments, culture and music festivals and events, encouraging youth voice at decision-making process at local level, strengthening partnership between youth groups, NGOs with local government to undertake joint initiatives, investing in education, including skills and lifelong learning by developing education and training infrastructure, teacher training and qualification, gender mainstreaming at all levels of the educational and VET system, promoting health and healthy lifestyles in schools and joint actions in the field of research and development. Approximately 1/3 of the overall IPA allocations of the Programme, i.e. EUR 2 520 000, will be devoted to actions under this thematic priority.