The project “SMARTLABOUR – Strengthening Alliance for Policy Development and Testing in the domain of Innovation, Digitalization, and the Labor Market in the Western Balkans”, aims to enable the effective adoption of technological improvements and encourages progress in the agricultural sector in the region by providing support for policy making based on evidence and using the capacity of civil society organizations.
The project will promote a Smart Specialization approach to development in the Western Balkans in line with EU trends and within the EU Cohesion Policy. Moreover, given its significant economic, innovative and scientific potential, the project is particularly focused on the agricultural and food sector as a key element Smart Specialization Strategy (Smart Specialization Strategy – S3) of Western Balkan countries. Project activities aim to systematize and expand S3 knowledge relevant to the agri-food sector, to make it available to all interested parties as well as to include actors from civil society as regular users and collaborators.
Specific objectives of the project:
- Establishing open platforms:
Creation of platforms where methodologies, stakeholder maps, data repositories and interactive tools for policy creation and testing will be available. This platform will be available to other countries of the Western Balkans that are not included in the project, thus encouraging it knowledge exchange and policy development in the region.
- Strengthening the Smart Labor Network (Smart Labor Network – SLN):
Strengthening the capacity of the Smart Labor Network as a central civil society organization for creating policies related to S3 at the national and regional level using research, advocacy and networking of the Network through an open platform and planned activities.
- Enabling participation in policy creation:
Cooperation with key stakeholders from Serbia, North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to create effective strategic solutions in support of smart specialization strategies in the agri-food sector at the national and regional level.
The financing of this project is provided by the project SMART Balkans – Civil Society for Connected Western Balkans, which is implemented by the Center for the Promotion of Civil Society (CPCD), the Center for Research and Policy Development (CRPM) and the Institute for Democracy and Mediation (IDM). The project is financially supported Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Norway.
The total duration of the project is 18 months. The lead partner is Public Policy Research Center (CENTER)/RE-PEOPLE from Serbia, while the project partners are Centre for Development Evaluation and Social Science Research (CREDI), Bosnia and Herzegovina and IMPETUS from North Macedonia.
