In the rural area of Croatia in Lika-Senj County, the highest number of young unemployed persons is in the category of 20 to 24 years of age with high school occupations lasting 4 and more years (70 persons out of 168 persons in this category). Categories are young people with secondary education with occupations up to 3 years and schools for skilled and highly skilled workers.
This time we are focused on the small town Otočac in Lika – Senj County with a population of 8,361.00. Young people need a job and a stimulating and healthy climate where those who want and those who are ambitious and hardworking will have space to achieve in the business world, and thus create their own foundations to stay and start their own family in the City of Otočac. Young people are an important segment of society, they are creative, innovative, energetic, full of enthusiasm and this is especially evident and comes to the fore in small communities. Young people are changing trends in society and the economy, they just need to be supported, they need to be made aware that they need and can ask for help and advice from their local governments and most importantly, they need help where they can and do not close their doors and become more one obstacle in a row to their business achievement.
The City of Otočac, as a unit of local self-government, is trying to design, apply for and implement as many projects as possible aimed at young people and strengthening their position in the community in which they live and work. Also, through the partnership position within the Projects, the City strives to participate in as many projects that involve and activate young people, which are implemented in the area of Otočac. We want young people to become active, informed, socially and politically responsible people already in high school who will have the will, desire and strength to change the situation and attitudes about employment and business success. Very few young people get involved in activities outside of school, do not take part in workshops and lectures held in their free time and it is very difficult to get them to start a social initiative or socially useful idea, and thus they are indirectly they deny themselves the possibility of employment because they ignore the fact today that lifelong learning, whether formal or informal, is important and necessary and that through it we all expand our horizons, acquire new knowledge, become more competitive in the market and increase employment opportunities.
Aware of the fact that the opinion of young people is taken as frivolous and underdeveloped for changes in society, projects in which the city is involved want to show that they have the opposite opinion and through projects, step by step they want to change the attitude of the majority, both young and young. older. One of the projects they are currently participating in is “Action for 5! Youth in the community “through which young people (high school students Otočac High School) took over the City Administration for one day, saw how it works in the City Administration, using City resources and information available to the City, wrote their projects to show the needs of young people of the town of Otočac. The winning group, in the month of June this year, will really realize their project and thus show that young people want and can.
By encouraging openness among young people, encouraging the desire for additional education, erasing fear of thinking “what others will say” we want to encourage young people to participate, to be loud, to point out their wishes and needs, to participate in all segments of society that interest them and to push their ideas and projects. The city of Otočac is here to listen to them, to help them and to realize their best projects together with them.
In addition to all the above steps that the City is actively taking to keep its young people or to return to Otočac after graduation, the City is supported by the fact that it provides scholarships to students with deficient professions and co-finances accommodation and meals in dormitories for students outside Otočac. they are educated in deficient secondary school orientations that are not offered in educational institutions in Otočac or Lika-Senj County, and there is a demand on the labor market. In the continuation of the mandate, the plan is to work with young people even more active, productive and to make Otočac a city of young ambitious and successful people who will realize business and private in the area of the City.
