Skills for Rural Employment (S4RE)

The Skills for Rural Employment (S4RE) project went from 2013 to 2018 funded by Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation and the Medicor Foundation (Liechtenstein) aimed to reduce poverty and unemployment in rural Kosovo by improving income and employment opportunities particularly for youth, women, minorities, and rural households.

The project combined skills development with local economic development, targeting remote municipalities in the Sharr Mountains and Southeast Kosovo.

Our Approach

S4RE introduced innovative, market-oriented solutions to address the gap between skills and employment opportunities. A key innovation of the project was the “opportunity group” methodology, where young people worked in peer groups to:

• develop practical and entrepreneurial skills 

• identify local economic opportunities 

• transition into employment or self-employment 

This approach enabled many participants to secure jobs or start small businesses locally, reducing the need for migration.

Strengthening Local Value Chains

The project supported small producers and businesses across key sectors, including:

• berries and fruit production 

• dairy and livestock 

• honey and non-timber forest products 

• textiles, handicrafts, and services 

By improving skills, quality, and market linkages, S4RE helped increase productivity and incomes in rural areas. S4RE worked closely with local businesses to provide on-the-job training opportunities, ensuring that skills development was aligned with real market demand.

Impact

• Nearly 5,000 individuals trained in relevant skills 

• Over 1,600 beneficiaries engaged in employment or income-generating activities 

• Strengthened local businesses and supply chains 

• Increased participation of women and minority groups in the labour market 

S4RE demonstrated that practical skills development, combined with private sector engagement and inclusive approaches, can create sustainable employment opportunities in rural areas.

Vocational education in Kosovo doesn’t cater to the needs of the business. Curricula are often outdated and students hardly get any practical on-the-job training. Businesses, on the other hand, are struggling to expand due to the lack of investments, limited human resources and the difficult economic situation.

As a result, every third Kosovar and almost 60% of young Kosovars are unemployed. Minorities are affected more than others: the unemployment rate is higher for Serbs, Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians. Less than 20% of women participate in the labor force at all, even as officially unemployed.

S4RE project aims to reduce poverty in rural areas of the Sharr Mountains and the southeast of Kosovo through skills development to increase the employability of the most vulnerable.

To equip young women and men for jobs, S4RE has been promoting practical on-the-job training. For example, in Kamenica, the south-eastern region of Kosovo, groups of unemployed youth were taught such skills as tailoring, IT, central heating installation, fruit cultivation, food processing, chicken farming etc. In addition to learning a trade, the participants analyze their opportunities and find solutions that bring employment and income. That is why we started calling our method an "opportunity group approach" instead of just a "learning group approach".

The businesses that provide on-the-job training hire some of the apprentices. Having seen the positive impact of the in-house informal training on business performance, some of the companies are now willing to take it forward at their own expense. Other youth manage to combine resources and start their own small businesses.

Local institutions such as employment agencies and youth councils have also expressed interest in taking the project’s training method forward to provide more sustainable assistance to young job seekers. S4RE supports their efforts to adapt the project’s methods to the institutional setting.

The project also promotes the integration of small local producers into supply chains for higher productivity, quality and income. S4RE focuses on four agricultural value chains: non-timber forest products, berries & fruit, dairy livestock and honey, and on two non-agricultural ones: textile & handicrafts and services. For example, the dairy company Malësia was able to diversify and expand its business by launching new products such as cheddar cheese and cheesecake. Hit Flores, a company that specializes in selling plants and other non-timber products from the Sharr Mountains, trained its staff to identify, classify, clean, process and package wild mushrooms, which helped it increase the quality and eventually sales of this product line.