• The first Youth dialogue with the Minister for Youth and sports was held successfully – 20 young people had the opportunity to talk about the possible solutions for improving youth policies with the Minister.
• 25 young people have finished with the preparation for the second Dialogue with the Prime Minister, which will be held at the beginning of 2021.
• We’ve also launched the Dialogue with young members of parliament. We are working on strengthening our relationship with the National assembly and its members, but also on providing young people with the platform to successfully communicate with MPs and address some of the important changes needed for the improvement of the National assebmly’s further work.

In 2020, two generations of the Academy for youth policy attended educational workshops (four modules per each generation) about youth policy, and the Alumni list became richer for 40 young people.

We also organized another Youth policy forum, which gathered 151 young people online. Youth and the Sustainable development goals was the topic of the Forum, and young people and decision makers gave recommendations for three dimensions of the SDGs: social, economic and environmental. KOMS also released a pubication – The Hitchhiker’s guide to sustainable development goals.

The youngest category of youth, coming from different regions of Serbia, had the opportunity to attend the first YouTube school. During the course, besides the valuable theoretic knowledge, the attendees crafted their own video content for YouTube, which gave them the chance to use all the skills and expertise they had previously learned.

We’ve launched our first YouTube channel intended specifically for young people when it comes to both content and its creators, given that the most of the creative team behind the channel consists of yound YouTubers. The channel, called Hiljadu zato was launched on August 12, on the International youth day, and its purpose is to educate young people on media literacy, to offer creative advice on achieving progress etc.

We became part of the DW Akademie multiplicator program, which has the goal of empowering our youth to use their knowledge and experience to support the media who offer, or want to offer informative content for youth.

We’ve supported advocacy initiatives for quality work internships for young people.

We conducted a public call for youth representatives in the Youth Council of the Government of the Republic of Serbia. We will have the opportunity to influence the improvement of youth policy through this important cross-sectoral body.

KOMS

• The Nationaln youth counci of Serbia has been given the status of a legally recognized ubrella association on June 21, 2020. by the Ministry for Youth and sports in accordance with Article 14 of the Law on Youth. After a long journey and the #SupportKOMS (#PodrziKOMS) campaign, we managed to be legally recognized with the support of member organizations, associates and friends, and, with teamwork and long-term commitment got a step closer to achieving our goals and what we stand for and fight for.
• We moved into a new space, which provides our team with more chances for growth.
• We organized another KOMS Assembly, where our member organizations chose new young leaders of KOMS.
• We continued with our internship program, with 7 interns getting the KOMS experience in 2020.

In 2020, we published 5 researched focused on youth:

• Youth in the media mirror, published at the beginning of 2020.
• The alternative report on the position and needs of youth in the Republic of Serbia.
• Report – Monitoring of the 2020 election campaign.
• Life of youth in Serbia: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Youth and entrepreneurship.

Publications:

• In cooperation with local and youth media and our member organizations, we created a brochure: How to communicate with the media and offered practical advice on how to communicate with the media on behalf of civil society organizations, so that they can recognize and hear the voice of young people.
• We also produced the publication: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Sustainable Development Goals, in order to bring young people closer to the world of sustainable development goals through one of the few publications existing in the Serbian language.

2020 taught us about solidarity with the youth in the region and the need for cooperation, which proved to be the key for overcoming a crisis such as the pandemic.

• In 2020, young people were active in regional cooperation, and KOMS became part of the Dialogue for Future, a joint regional UN program.
• We held numerous regional meetings with umbrella alliances from the region, on different topics, such as improving youth policy, EU dialogue with young people, improving cooperation during COVID, and many others.
• KOMS took part in key events regarding youth policy in Europe.

We published three statements:

• Statement on the capacities of the youth sector to support the implementation of measures of the Government of the Republic of Serbia during the state of emergency in March 2020.
• Statement regarding the misusage of youth and their associations in April 2020.
• Statement on the occasion of the demonstrations in July 2020, where we strongly condemned the violence the portesters had to endure during the demonstrations, of which a significant number were young people.

We also held two trainings on youth policy for mayors.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we were active on social media networks and offered young people online content for further education and training:

• The Young Media Video Library was created in the year marked by the pandemic, with the aim of being used as materials in online trainings and school classes. 106 video tutorials are available to anyone who wants to improve themselves. The authors of the video content are media professionals and youth activists from all over Serbia.
• We realized more than 25 educational webinars on different topics important to young people.
• We organized the School of insta activism and were a tap away from making changes in local communities.
• We worked with creative young youtubers and empowered them to create content which affirms responsible behavior in the area of youth safety.
• With the youth counci of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, we conducted the first digital multicultural youth exchange.
• We organized the conference to facilitate the exchange of knowledge about online methods of working with and for young people.
• We virtually visited 10 administrative districts throughout Serbia and educated young people about hate crimes.

Initiatives and project support:

• As part of the OPENS on the Road program, we supported the implementation of initiatives in 7 local government units.
• We also conducted a competition for the award of financial support to youth organizations and organizations for young people, within the project MLADI with the aim of encouraging and enabling civic participation of young people.
• #odlučionice 2020: in 5 local self-government units we implemented 5 local initiatives and empowered 15 local coordinators (representatives of the municipality / city, civil society organizations and the student parliament) to jointly improve youth policy in their local community.

Visibility – KOMS in media

• KOMS was mentioned more than 500 times in national, regional and European media.
• We visited every national television and the biggest cable TV channels.
• Comments, interviews and statements of our members could be found in almost every daily and weekly newspaper.
• We were guests at the most listened virtual radio stations, and our work was mentioned on a daily basis on many different online portals.