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The second roundtable “Identifying niches to build up sustainable livelihoods” held from 19-20 October 2007.
SECOND GROUP

The aim of the subject-groups session is to develop a set of workable model solutions, which would provide prospects to the target groups to build up a sustainable, durable livelihood for themselves. This includes providing advice about existing or future initiatives, such as business incubators, agricultural cooperatives, access to micro finance schemes or any other relevant networks.

What opportunities are to be found in sectors, industries and branches with good prospects for the Target Group?
When talking about possible prospects for the target group concerned, it is important to mention openness, flexibility and readiness to adopt examples taken from the neighboring countries and their models. Vast majority of models have already been adopted in Serbia out of which we have heard some of the successful stories in the first day, but nonetheless there are many examples in the surrounding countries. We suggest broad-minded thinking and scanning of the environment together with market researches to take place in order to identify additional prospects and opportunities. This process needs to have thoroughness and wide array to look upon, which can be accomplished in one out of two ways. First is forming an organization or an institution which would seek out these opportunities as the main goal, and the second is forming a sort of alliance between those institutions that have successfully already adopted certain models and have already proven facts to back up with. This is something that can reasonably make firm ground for forming and grouping future models and institutions.
The opportunities inside these sectors are widely known and at the same time they are being the final goal and stand as following: increasing overall employment, empowering socially jeopardized individuals, increasing employment for the target group of socially jeopardized individuals.

What are promising present and future niches in these markets?
A question significantly connected with the previous issue whereas some facts and key explanations have already been drawn up. Flexibility represents important factor out of which the following procedures can be drown out in the search for the final goal:

What are the prospects for salaried employment / entrepreneurship in these niches?

These prospects have been mentioned during the first day, saying that there are already adopted methods inside the region of Serbia. The main industry opportunities are tourism, agriculture but moreover it can be found in more technical businesses connected with textile (although having a lot of dispute on this issue due to the fact that it is also determined by the entering in the European Union), catering, and workshops. Self employment or entrepreneurship is definitely one of the possibilities, but something that can be even further improved by means of providing further incentives, through responsible institutions, that are to encourage the people to use their knowledge and get in to the self employment system.

A question significantly connected with the previous one whereas it can be mentioned that the 2 most common ways of dealing with unemployment are through salaried employment and through entrepreneurship. Inside the two the first has a lot to do with the implications through both round tables which is education, and as far as the second is concerned the models have been represented at the second round table and the possibilities inside the country lie in agriculture, tourism, and generally all that is connected with more technical expertise (this is something that is easy to be “digested”, or to be adopted).

Where can relevant and current information be found and made available to the target group?

An excellent question that found one of the core problems regarding the flow of information and the connections between institutions that are dealing with unemployment. As it has been discussed, something that was extremely obvious during the first two round table meetings, these are rare occasions where people working for GO’s and NGO’s can meet and exchange information that is highly relevant to the main goal of all which is minimizing unemployment, The idea is that there is absolutely no reason to meet in this fashion to exchange this valuable information, but instead use information technologies to share it. As it has been discussed internet is not the best way of reaching these socially jeopardized individuals due to the fact that it is not a common mean of sharing information for the two groups. This is a very logical proceeding, but on the other half there is not even a single reason why the organizations between themselves wouldn’t use internet as a common ground for sharing knowledge, ideas, future plans and all the other types of information. A creation of internet (or maybe even intranet) portal is a solution that will significantly reduce a disorientation and diss-functionality between the organizations.

What are the important networks which could be of use to the target group and can they access them?

All these organizations that are dealing with this issue represent a network that is valuable for the target group. This is why there needs to be a strong connection between these organizations, to support in the most reasonable way and provide all the needed information for the target group, furthermore providing new ideas and means of sustaining unemployment. The organizations that are making this network are SME’s agencies and all the relevant government and nongovernmental organizations.

Are there any success stories or models for income generation which have worked especially well and how could they be used by the vulnerable target group?

One of the ideas of the second group was to take advantage of the fair’s and all the “gather-around” meetings, and use it as a place for sharing information and to get closer to the target group. The idea is as following:

The use of already organized manifestations is essential – any other organizing and preparing a type of organization on our own might minimize the result, simply because then it would mean that this organization would be as any other career fair that is dealing specifically and only with these issues. This would decrease significantly the availability for the target group, if done in this fashion it is known that career fairs are gathering highly skilled and educated workforce which is not our target group.
Inside the fair (any other theme, issue) to organize a sharing ideas and information. This can even fulfill the program of the organizers of the manifestation, but more importantly for us to inform the target group and have more available information for them
This type of informing must be in the way of story telling and simply as sharing ideas instead of having any formal headline. Successful business ideas might be one of the possible ways of calling this part of the manifestation.

What are the key requirements for succeeding in building up a sustainable income?