Activate! Integrated Social Protection and Employment to Accelerate Progress for Young People in Montenegro

The Joint Programme aims to enhance the capacities of the social protection system to better serve people in need. It focuses on youth, children, migrants and refugees, and addresses root causes of human trafficking, while supporting decent work and employability/skills development. Innovation is used as a key change strategy: the programme applies advanced methodologies (foresight, human-centered design, policy simulation tools, etc.) in order to improve targeting, expand coverage, and address adequacy of social protection, but also activate Montenegro’s youth who are currently not in education, employment or training (NEET) and other vulnerable and marginalized groups through enhanced labour activation. The project supports the development of transformative policy tools, which have the potential to be replicated across policy areas and scaled up by the Government. These tools simulate policy impact to ensure effective social protection which, provided there is political commitment, results in reducing poverty rate by 3 percentage points by 2020. More people, and youth in particular, will be reached through labour activation services: these services are co-designed with the target beneficiaries and therefore address their unique needs. Consequently, previously inactive youth become contributors to the state budget, instead of recipients of social assistance. To conclude, by the end of the Joint Programme, we will have reformed, well-equipped, integrated social protection and employment systems, able to reach those who are left behind and offering client-oriented, fit-for-purpose services. This will enable vulnerable and marginalized groups to overcome the challenges of poverty, inequality, unemployment and migration. The proposal builds on the Mainstreaming, Acceleration and Policy Support (MAPS) process which identified synergies between the EU accession and SDG agenda. Finally, the Joint Programme builds on the ongoing social protection system assessment (using the Inter-agency Social Protection Assessments Core Diagnostic Instrument, CODI), and is fully aligned with the national institutional reform process.

Project symbol

MNE/19/50/UND

Admin unit

DWT/CO-Budapest

Start date

01/12/2019

End date

31/07/2022

Total allocation

438486

Total expenditure

Status

Closed

371938

Development Partners

Multi Partner Trust Fund Office, UNDP

Country/Countries

Montenegro

Outcomes

Outcome 3: Economic, social and environmental transitions for full, productive and freely chosen employment and decent work for all