With true entrepreneurial spirit, strong motivation and a bold dream for her future, Fejme Agush, a young 31-year-old Roma woman from Skopje, has become the owner of the first officially registered hairdressing salon in Suto Orizari, the largest Roma settlement in the country.

As she busily clears up the salon after another hard day’s work, helped out by her husband and four children, Fejme explains “We work non-stop here! All of us—me, my husband and my children—we all see our future in this place. So we plan each move carefully and work hard to make this business a success.”  

The results of her efforts and dedication are clear to see. “Justin” is the best equipped salon in the area, offering everything from simple trimming to highlighting, dying, styling and perming. And after training as a hairdresser in Kumanovo and working for many years on an irregular basis, Fejme has the hard-earned skills and experience to offer her customers any hairstyle they desire.

“It’s taken twelve years to get to this stage,” she says, “though I always dreamt of having my own business. I was already running a salon but the job wasn’t secure because the business wasn’t formalised. To be honest I was frightened to start up my own company because of the risks and all the paperwork.”

Fejme’s big push to gain greater job security and improve the prospects for herself and her children came in 2014 when a friend told her about the Self-Employment Programme. “I felt caught in a trap working in what they call the ‘grey market’, so when I heard there was a programme offering help to make companies official I thought ‘this could be my last chance – it’s now or never!’.”

After making her first enquiry, Fejme was assigned an expert mentor from UNDP’s Mentoring Programme. Sinisa Pekevski helped Fejme with the application procedure and supplied her with information about the business training and support provided through the Programme, as well as about the requirements and the conditions for receiving a special grant to start up her company.

Fejme successfully applied for the course and found herself pleasantly surprised at how quickly she learnt the ropes. “The course was very practical,” she says, “and I realised I’d been doing a lot of management tasks all along without realising it. It boosted my confidence and made it easier to learn the new information about running a formal company.”

Having completed the workshop part of the Programme, Fejme went on to apply for the grant to buy new equipment as a foundation to expand her hairdressing business.  She is now one of 8,000 beneficiaries who have so far registered their own business.

Fejme has kept on learning and making the most of all opportunities available to her, becoming a member of the National Craft Chamber and regularly visiting the Employment Service Agency and the Roma Info Centre to learn about new possibilities for support, tips and advice on how to develop her business.

Her oldest son is keen to join the business and continue the family tradition as a hairstylist, adding to the stability of the company. And in order to serve more clients, the family is thinking of getting a bank loan for expanding the workplace in the family house.

She encourages others who work illegally from her community to follow her example and try starting their own company. “We all know it isn’t easy, but good things come to those who work hard and never give up”.  

Roma jobseekers face many more obstacles to finding employment than the majority of the population. To help address these obstacles, UNDP, with generous funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, has implemented a project to provide coaching and mentoring services for Roma jobseekers.

Since 2014, this type of support has proved highly successful in overcoming some of the key obstacles faced by unemployed Roma and other people at risk of social exclusion, helping them to access available employment services and ultimately to enter the labour market.

With the cleaning of the main storm-drain channel in the town of Novo Selo, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has embarked upon a six-year programme designed to reduce the risk of flooding and improve water quality in the Strumica River Basin, which is home to 125,000 people in six largely agricultural municipalities in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

The CHF 2.9 million (USD 3 million) programme, called “Restoring the Health of the Strumica River Basin,” is funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and implemented by UNDP.

The programme is based on a UNDP assessment that found that flooding poses the greatest single threat to the area’s population. Unsustainable farming practices and rising urban and industrial demand for water have combined to worsen fluctuations in water levels and exacerbate the risk of droughts and floods, making the Basin’s ecosystem extremely vulnerable to climate change.

The cleaning of all the major drainage canals in the Basin will be followed in early 2016 by measures to mitigate the risks of heavy flooding, including the restoration and improvement of flood-control structures, better management of local dams and reservoirs, and measures aimed at assisting local residents to take action to protect their homes and businesses from flood damage.

At the same time, UNDP will work directly with local farmers to adopt more sustainable practices in order to protect water quality and local biodiversity and maintain sufficient volume in the River. Hundreds of farmers will receive training, supported by CHF 550,000 in grants for equipment, to reduce their use of pesticides and fertilizers and implement more efficient irrigation solutions.

Click here for more info about the project.

Everyone in Prilep knows Grandpa Dimce’s ‘Old Bakery’. It was the town’s first bakery. It closed in 1975 but for decades people still reminisced about Grandpa Dimce and his original recipe for homemade white bread—so tasty and perfectly baked in a specially designed wooden stove almost a hundred years old.

Now they need reminisce no more. Thanks to the Self-Employment Programme run by the Government and UNDP, the Old Bakery has been given a new lease on life.

“We heard about the Self-Employment Programme a couple of years ago and my brothers and I decided to apply and use the funds to buy flour and bring the bakery back to life,” says Vlatko Apostolski, one of Dimce’s grandsons. “We’d always wanted to run the business and revive our granddad’s secret bread recipe. The Programme made it happen.”

Within days of its official re-opening, the bakery was selling 200 loaves a day. Within a week the quantity had doubled and the queues were getting longer and longer.

“Things moved really fast,” says Vlatko. “Grandpa’s old customers were the first to come back, of course. Then the word got around and new customers started coming. At first we thought we could do all the work on our own as a family, but the demand just grew and grew until we had to take on more employees. Our sales window is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Today we’re producing about 4,000 loaves a week and we’ve got 32 employees working in three shifts.”

The Old Bakery now provides fresh bread to all the small markets in Prilep. But the plans of the Apostolski family don’t stop there. In a few months from now they plan to open a new bakery in a town suburb. “We’ve bought premises of about 6,000 m2 in one of Prilep’s industrial zones where we’re going to build a new bakery with three or four bread ovens,” explains Vlatko. “All of the new bakeries will continue to use Grandpa Dimce’s traditional method of baking in wooden ovens.”

Their long-term plans include opening five new bakeries employing at least thirty new people.  

“Our programme focuses on transforming unemployed people into successful private-sector entrepreneurs,” explains UNDP Resident Representative Louisa Vinton. “The runaway success of the bakery shows not only that traditional family businesses can thrive on the market but that, once they find their niche, they can even make the leap into mid-sized companies. One family has multiplied its energy and skills into secure livelihoods for dozens of other families.”

The Self-Employment Programme was designed to reduce the country’s high unemployment rate, which currently stands at 28%. UNDP has implemented the programme on behalf of the Government since 2007.

In the past eight years, more than 7,650 people have received coaching, training and start-up grants to start their own small businesses. 30% of these self-made entrepreneurs are women, and 30% are young people. Over 70% of the small businesses created since 2007 are still active today—a remarkable success rate for start-ups.

Results

A new employment measure aims to help some 120 unemployed people with disabilities achieve their dreams and start up their own businesses by the end of next year.

Launched by the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy, the Employment Service Agency and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Self-Employment for People with Disabilities measure will work to integrate unemployed people with disabilities into the labour market by providing them with the customized support they need to start up their own businesses.

“Every individual has a right to self-determination and a dignified life and we hope that this measure will help all people in the country achieve this,“ said Minister of Labour and Social Policy Dime Spasov.

Persons with disabilities are amongst the most marginalized and excluded populations in the world. Globally they number an estimated 650 million, or 10 per cent of the world’s population, making people with disabilities the world’s largest minority. Unemployment rates for people with disabilities run as high as 80 per cent in some countries, and those who do have jobs generally occupy low-paid, menial positions, often in segregated workplaces where compensation is often symbolic.

This situation is the result of widely-held misconceptions. Many employers incorrectly assume that disability equates to the lack of ability to perform a job, or that costly adjustments will be required to accommodate people with disabilities in the workplace.  Moreover, people with disabilities often face barriers to the education and training they need to find gainful employment. Yet, as numerous studies have shown, employing people with disabilities yields both social and economic benefits.

Launching the new measure, UNDP Deputy Resident Representative Alessandro Fracassetti stated, “It’s not just the right thing to do—it also has clear economic advantages,” adding that UNDP will be working in close partnership with civil society organizations and associations of people with disabilities to design workable models for the economic inclusion of people with disabilities.

Ensuring that people with disabilities enjoy the right to work on an equal footing with all other members of the labour force is at the heart of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which the country signed in 2009 and ratified in 2011. The new measure is designed to help create the conditions needed to fully satisfy the commitments of the Convention.

“This measure will help a large number of people with disabilities to get the chance to apply and open their own businesses,” said Branimir Jovanovski from the National Union of People with Physical Disabilities. “I hope many of them will seize this opportunity.”

To help ensure the success of this project, a special set of promotional materials will be created to reach out to people with disabilities, enabling people with visual, hearing and speech disabilities to access all the information they need to benefit from the Self-Employment Programme. 

“Individualized consulting, and mentoring services will be provided to individuals with disabilities and their family members throughout all phases of the project, including training, the development of business plans and help in starting up and running business activities,” explained Vlatko Popovski, the Director of the Employment Service Agency.  

“Each newly created start-up will have a chance to immediately employ two additional people to support smooth business operations and help overcome some of the barriers,” said Vice Prime Minister Vladimir Pesevski, meaning that this measure will generate 360 new jobs in the next year.

The new measure builds on the successful track record of employment-promotion programmes that have helped more than 6,700 people to create their own businesses over the past eight years. UNDP’s experience from around the world has shown that self-employment can provide an outlet for the creative and entrepreneurial skills of people with disabilities and foster better quality jobs.

“This is something completely new for us—a real historic opportunity that can bring good to many and I am sure that it will,” said Vasko Markov, President of the National Union for Deaf People.

”Young people today are more connected and better informed than any generation before”, said UNDP Resident Representative Louisa Vinton. “But to make the most of this potential, we all need to work together to create more job openings. Not only more jobs but better quality jobs that tap into the creativity of young people. That is why we’re here today and why I welcome this innovative initiative to help this country’s youth make the most of all available opportunities.”

The UNDP Resident Representative was speaking earlier today at the launch of the first Youth Info Club in the premises of the Faculty of Economics in Skopje. Together with her on the podium before some 100 students was Dime Spasov, the Minister of Labour and Social Policy. “This is a great way of mobilising young people,” said the Minister. “The info club has been designed to meet the special needs of students entering the world of work, providing them with real time information on all available opportunities and delivering guidance on the best ways to make the best of these opportunities. “

A total of four youth info clubs will open throughout May and June this year at universities in Skopje, Tetovo, Bitola and Stip. Their aim is to strengthen the links between potential employers and new graduates. The clubs will not only provide students with career advice and up-to-date info on all the latest employment opportunities, but also offer guest lectures with career advice from private companies, public administration officers, NGOs and international organisations. The info clubs will be managed by 2 NGOs--Mladi Info and Koalicija Sega--which have several years of experience in advocating for the needs and interests of young people.

“I am especially pleased to see that the info club that we are officially launching today will be managed by young people,” said Louise Vinton, “Since they are the ones who know best their own interests and the challenges young people face today. They will ensure that the clubs’ services are tailored to the needs of their peers.”

The youth info club initiative is part of a wider campaign by the Government and UNDP to tackle youth employment—one of the country’s most pressing socio-economic problems. This campaign has involved a redoubling of efforts to generate and develop innovative solutions to mobilise young people and ease their transition from education to work.

This month also saw the launch of a new UNDP global strategy--Empowered Youth, Sustainable Future-- that puts youth at the centre of all the work done by UNDP all around the world. “The strategy,” explained Louisa Vinton, “is centred on the vision that when youth are informed, engaged and empowered to contribute to sustainable human development, then families, communities and nations grow stronger and are better placed to withstand the challenges of the world today.”

Current employment statistics are not encouraging. Young people make up 37 percent of the global working-age population but 60 percent of the total unemployed.

The strategy states among other that increased attention is needed to ensure young people’s effective transition from school to decent jobs. The creation of decent jobs, the reduction of discrimination in the workplace, and the creation of a basis for fair wages are all imperative, as is the need for quality education and training that provide graduates with the skills employers seek.

The UN’s International Day of Biodiversity 2015 will be marked by the launch of the country’s first water monitoring station to help restore the ecosystem of Lake Prespa.

The official opening of the new state-of-the-art monitoring station on May the 22^nd is especially appropriate to the theme of this year’s International Day of Biological Diversity—‘Biodiversity for Sustainable Development’.

The station is set to make a significant contribution to preserving the rich variety of natural habitats and species of the Lake Prespa basin, one of the most ancient freshwater lakes in the world, with a unique ecosystem that has evolved over five million years providing a habitat for more than 2,000 species of fish, birds, mammals and plants.

The survival of this invaluable biodiversity depends directly on the health of the water, which has suffered greatly over the last 40 years—above all from the prolonged dry period and pollution caused by unsustainable farming practices, including excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides and the dumping of waste.

For more than a decade now, UNDP has been leading a major programme to restore the health and biodiversity of Lake Prespa, helping to implement numerous measures aimed at encouraging more sustainable farming practices and supporting research into identifying and addressing the causes of pollution.

One of the central findings has been the urgent need for more efficient and regular monitoring of the health of the water. Indeed, the lack of regular monitoring has been shown to be one of the underlying causes of the degradation of Lake Prespa, with insufficient data seriously impeding attempts to identify and respond effectively and swiftly to challenges such as surges in pollution.

“It was difficult to know the right actions to take,” explains Gjoko Strezovski, the Mayor of the Municipality of Resen, “because it wasn’t possible to detect accurately all the changes in the ecosystem. We didn’t have the data available, for example, to tell which of the changes harming the biodiversity and the water ecosystem were being caused by man-made activities and which were natural activities. By investing in monitoring now we are investing in the future. The station and the data it collects will enable new generations to make smarter, wiser and more informed decisions from now on.”

The new two-storey monitoring station, fitted with its own dock and lift for the monitoring boat, includes a laboratory with modern equipment capable of measuring the water quality on a regular basis in a cost-effective manner.

Two experts and a technical person employed full-time at the station will conduct research into water samples collected by the monitoring boat.

Besides regular monitoring, the station can also offer technical and logistical support to all domestic and international institutions interested in working and studying in Prespa.

“The opening of this station is the crowning achievement of a long process of building up the monitoring capacities for the management of the Prespa ecosystem,” says UNDP Deputy Resident Representative, Alessandro Fracassetti. “Investing in early monitoring saves funds both in the mid-term and long-term and is itself a major contribution to preserving valuable diversity and helping to foster sustainable livelihoods at local level.”

Investments have been made into monitoring the water of Lake Prespa since 2004, with generous financial support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the Global Environment Facility.

Together with partners from the Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning and the Municipality of Resen, UNDP has helped establish a hydrological monitoring station on the Golema Reka tributary of Lake Prespa, a central meteorological/climatological station for the entire Prespa Lake basin, a system of seven agro-meteorological stations to ensure timely and less polluting control of pests and diseases, and a number of water quality monitoring programmes at national and transboundary level.

Preserving the planet’s rich variety of plants and animals is an urgent global priority that has led the United Nations to designate 2011–2020 the UN Decade on Biodiversity.

“This is a very special day for me,” says Tatjana Arsovska, “It’s the first time in twelve years my son has clapped his hands!”

Tatjana’s son, aged 12, is taking part in his first class at a sports centre in Kumanovo specially designed for the needs of people with disabilities.

“He has a severe form of autism and he’s been in a wheelchair most of his life,” explains Tatjana. “For so long he’s just not shown any interest in moving. But now—thanks to the great teachers and facilities here—he’s really engaging with the activities and enjoying himself!”

The sports centre has five teachers offering daily classes for people with disabilities. Amongst the teachers is 26-year-old Aleksandar Spirkovski, a former basketball player who completed a university degree four years ago but has—like so many young people in Kumanovo—been unable to find work since graduation.

“I was starting to think of looking for work abroad before this programme started,” says Alex. “There didn’t seem to be a future for me here. Then I took a chance with the Community Works Programme and the experience I’ve gained in working with people with disabilities has totally changed my direction in life. To see them make real progress every lesson has been amazing!”

After ten months in the programme, Alex is now about to become the first person in the country with a master’s degree in working to improve the lives of people with disabilities through sports activities.

The Community Works Programme was launched in 2012 and has been hugely successful in achieving its twin aims of tackling social exclusion on two fronts at once. Implemented by the Government, the municipalities and UNDP, the Programme offers opportunities for unemployed people to gain valuable skills while at the same time providing badly needed social services for the most socially excluded groups in the country.

Already over 8,000 socially excluded people in 30 municipalities have felt the benefits from the services provided through the Programme, with each municipality launching schemes of part-time work experience in areas such as care for the elderly, services for people with disabilities, and early childhood development.

The Municipality of Kumanovo first joined the Community Works Programme in 2013 by launching the sports centre to cater for the needs of some 500 local people with disabilities. The decision to focus on athletics was driven in part by research that showed that people with disabilities suffer high rates of obesity because they lead overly sedentary lives at home or in institutions. The facility has been providing services to 60 beneficiaries, helping to improve their lives and the lives of their families.

“Before this centre was opened, many people with disabilities just stayed at home,” explains Alex, “Now the adults and children who come here have made a lot of friends and their motor skills are improving on a daily basis.”

Today saw the Municipality of Tetovo take a major step forward in increasing the transparency, accountability and responsiveness of local government. The launch of an innovative new system called My Municipality is set to transform the way the public communicate their priorities to decision-makers, radically increasing the inclusiveness of the municipality’s policy-making processes.

With the My Municipality system, user-friendly touchscreens will be installed in the offices of the municipality offering citizens the chance to identify the three top priorities for themselves and their families from a list of local development issues and policies.

“The My Municipality solution is deceptively simple,” said Tetovo’s Mayor, Teuta Arifi. “What amounts to just a few touches of the screen for individual citizens will provide invaluable data to inform and guide policy-makers in the decisions and actions they take for the whole municipality. All the results of the citizens’ choices will be visible online and accessible to all.”

My Municipality was designed and implemented by UNDP in partnership with the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy and four pilot municipalities, Tetovo, Kumanovo, Prilep and Shuto Orizari, as part of a new project funded by the Swiss Development Cooperation for empowering Roma.

The four pilot municipalities were selected on the basis that each has a large Roma population with a high number of unemployed. With the new system, local authorities as well as UNDP and a range of NGOs and CSOs, will be in a much stronger position to develop effective measures for increasing the inclusion of marginalised groups.

The way in which the new system is being implemented, however, goes beyond the primary aim of the wider project, since it not only reaches out to marginalised groups but gathers data on the needs of the entire local population.

In this way, both the municipalities and UNDP will be able to collect valuable and accurate data and this will make it possible to follow changing trends in the needs of the different groups in the population, enabling much better informed actions at local level. This is especially important in the light of recent studies that have revealed a lack of appropriate data on the needs of vulnerable groups and identified shortcomings and institutional barriers to these groups expressing their needs.

The touchscreens are available in all local languages, including Albanian, Turkish, Roma, Serbian and Vlach.

The list of priorities the public can choose from are based on the municipalities’ local action plans for Roma inclusion. The areas listed include:

•    More jobs
•    Better education
•    Better healthcare
•    Better protection from violence and crime
•    Better access to food
•    Better environmental protection
•    More equal opportunities for men and women
•    Greater freedom from discrimination
•    Better access to phone and internet
•    Better access to clean water
•    Better access to energy
•    More support for people who are not able to work
•    More transparent and responsive local authorities

The citizens will be able to specify their priorities in person at the offices of municipal buildings as well as at various events that will be organized in the pilot municipalities. Those citizens who are unable to visit the municipal offices will be able to complete a survey on the municipality website.

“Transparency and citizen inclusion are crucial to the progress of any municipality,” says Mayor Arifi. “And we believe that My Municipality will contribute greatly to bottom-up policy-making.”

The new process of identifying and acting upon public priorities  will be subject to thorough and constant monitoring—measuring the number of users, analysing reports on citizens’ priorities, and ultimately the number of actions undertaken by the municipalities and the national authorities based on the identified priorities of the citizens.

UNDP will support the citizens’ priorities in each of the pilot municipalities with small-scale funds.

Concluding the launch of My Municipality in Tetovo, UNDP Resident Representative Louisa Vinton offered the audience further insight into the background of the project: “The new tool was inspired by an online survey called ‘My World’ that was carried out by the UN to find out what ordinary citizens all over the world really want in the years to come,” she explained. “So far, more than 2 million people from 194 nations have voted, including 900 people from here. The UN is campaigning now to reach a goal of at least 3,000 participants from the country by the end of June. All this data will help inform world leaders about the priorities of their citizens. And the same idea lies behind ‘My Municipality’, only here it is being applied at local level, giving Tetovo citizens a chance to vote for the issues they want municipal authorities to treat as most important. This initiative reflects UNDP's broader commitment to helping local authorities improve people's lives. But we know this can't be done in isolation: it's crucial to listen to what people want and engage them in devising solutions.”

Dashboard is the latest innovative tool designed to open the window on municipal functions and facilitate greater public participation in local decision-making on environmental protection services. Launched in April 2014, this new interactive online web tool is now successfully operating in the Municipality of Gevgelija and looks set for expansion to other local government functions and services.