The Mladiinfo Team in Macedonia has developed the Matching Point Initiative to address high youth unemployment. The initiative will connect educated but unemployed young people with paid volunteering and traineeship opportunities through Mladiinfo's online platform. Over 12 months, participants will gain experience in 2-3 different organizations to build their skills. This will make youth more employable and help organizations find potential long-term employees. The initiative aims to launch locally, then expand across Mladiinfo's country networks and internationally to reduce unemployment and welfare dependence among youth.

1. Mladiinfo Team
Project Name: Matching Point Initiative
Team members:
Tamara Miletic
Ana Despotovska
Milan Zálešák
Country: Macedonia

2. Issue addressed
Mladiinfo identified several roots causing the ever growing youth
unemployment issue:
 Lack of information flow
 Lack of access to quality education and non-formal educational
opportunities
 Youth with good education but without an opportunity to put knowledge
into practice and gain experience
 Lack of job opportunities
 Gap between skills acquired with education and skills required on the
labor market
 Young people’s dependence on welfare benefits or parents
Practice has shows us that large number of educated young people, who
have appropriate qualification but have never had the chance to practice
their acquired knowledge and gain experience, are out of work at least for
a years after completion of studies.
The real problem: lack of job opportunities at the labor market for the
educated skilled young people
Our target group: educated skilled young people with or without experience

3. Solution: Mladiinfo Matching Point Initiative
specialized program for promotion of “paid” volunteering positions and
traineeships
As a platform offering services and available opportunities for youth (with 145.000 visitors per
month), Mladiinfo is the perfect matching point where jobless young people can find PAID
opportunities to “WORK” as volunteers or trainees for a period of 12 months
Young people
Companies with appropriate
educational
Enterprises qualifications
Institutions
MLADIINFO CHANNEL but without
concrete
NGOs experience and
skills
The real innovation of this programme is that during their service, candidates will have an
opportunity to combine and collaborate with 2/3 different actors for the period of 3/4 months each.
In this way they will have an opportunity to acquire more experience and to become more
flexible, communicative, tolerant, team players and organized, while being useful to the community
at the same time.
The programme of volunteering/traineeship will be planned in accordance to prior
education, interests and needs of the candidate.

4. How can the Matching Point Initiative be Realized?
The Initiative envisages three phases of implemenation involving different actors in
each phase:
The  step: establish official collaboration with the local actors
(NGOs, Companies, Universities, Institutions, etc.) interested to take part in the
educational programme.
 Collaboration agreements will be established between all parties
(Mladiinfo, candidates and institutions/companies).
 Mladiinfo will help candidates define the best combination of the programme they
wants to develop.
 Each candidate will have an opportunity to combine and collaborate with 2/3 different
actors in one year of experience (3/4 months per each institution/company) to
acquire more experience and skills at the same time.
 The implementation at local level is envisaged for a period of 2 years in order to get
feedback. In case of positive feedback we will proceed with the next steps.
The  step: extand at network level and involve the Mladiinfo branches (Mladiinfo
Slovensko, Mladiinfo Czech Republic, Mladiinfo Montenegro and Mladiinfo
Slovenia), as well as the Mladiinfo country representatives from
Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Kosovo and Romania.
The  step: extend at international level through research and involvement of global
actors (NGO’s, Companies, Universities, Institutions, etc.)

5. Why is it a good idea?
Benefits
Short-term Long-term
Youth  acquire experience become emplyoable
 communication and organizing skills become competitive
 creativity, confidence get employment
 self-control, patience get an idea for business
 adaptability, flexibility
Organizations/  Get young energetic workers eager to Find valuable employees who might
Companies work and bring in fresh ideas contribute greatly to their development
Community/  Keep unemployment rates stagnant Reduce unemployment rates
Society  Reduce the welfare burden  Raise the living standard