From Foster to Prosper

When you say that you are a child from a foster home, people don’t give you an opportunity to show in any job, they don’t let you go forward, because they don’t trust you, because they think that children from foster homes are criminals, they are bad, this and that.

There are children that graduate in the police academy and are inspectors at the moment, they have become big, and had proved that they are capable to be as any other citizen.” - statement from I.J., one of the children that has left the home that takes care for children without parents and parental care at the age of 18, one of the participants in the interviews conducted during the first phase of the project “From Foster to Prosper”.The problems faced by youth after leaving the foster homes are an additional inspiration for the First Children’s Embassy in the World – Megjashi to insist on new activities in terms of support and solving this serious problem.
 This project represents the continuous work of the First Children’s Embassy in the World – Megjashi, continuation of the initiative for the care of youth and providing psycho-social and educational support to the further development in their individual lives. As part of the activities in the recent years, the First Children’s Embassy in the World – Megjashi had organized courses in foreign languages and information technologies, training for culinary skills and encouragement for independent living, lobbying and direct psychosocial counselingIn order to achieve a multidisciplinary and regional approach in support of this category of young people we’ve started a new regional project in cooperation with Open Media Group from Croatia as a carrier of the project and other NGOs from Serbia and Slovenia. The project name is “From Foster to Prosper” and has started it’s implementation in October 2011 with a one year duration. This project is funded by the European Commission and aims to ensure active social inclusion of youth living in facilities for children and youth without parental care and those who left these institutions, to promote their employment and provide equal opportunities. The project is expected to objectively and analytically represent the current situation of the orphan children and youth in R. Macedonia, their education and the percentage of employment/unemployment of the young people who left the foster homes for orphan children and youth without parental care, and also the problems they are faced with daily.  The project will be implemented in four phases and includes: conducting research, interviews with youth living in the foster homes for orphan children and youth without parental care, media campaign and PR in which the speaker will be Vesna Petrushevska who will stimulate the employers to employ these young people, and further on workshops will be organized in which experts will offer training related to applying for a job.The total implementation of the project is for a period of one year and one of the objectives expected to be achieved in the final phase is the recruitment of young people in particular respective companies/institutions according to their qualifications.

From Foster to Prosper! is a project that forms networking and transnational cooperation of 5 NGOs from 4 different countries(Slovenia, Macedonia, Serbia nad Croatia) who are experts in media and raising public awareness about important issues of civil society: social cohesion, Human rights and development of social inclusive societies. Aim of media campaign is to raise public awareness about problems of young people raised in foster homes, especially teenagers and young people who will lose their legal right to stay in government subsidized so-called residential communities, and also to raise awareness and knowledge of the employers about the abilities of these young perspective individuals and the advantages of employing them. Project will be implemented in 2 phases. We will combine several methods of implementation and through 12-month period proposed methodology we will reach project goals. Open Media Group will create memorable Media campaign with strong spokespersons and that way deminish the risk of reduced perception capacity. In this project, we will use a combination of research, educational and informational activities, campaigning and advocacy work, a methodology, which has been successful in our previous projects. After we get public attention. Main partner for Macedonia is First Children's Embassy in the World MEGJASHI