Employment mentors play a crucial role in helping mentees identify their strengths, stay motivated, and prepare for entering the labor market, securing a job, and maintaining long-term employment. As an innovative approach within the social protection system in Bosnia and Herzegovina, employment mentoring offers numerous benefits. These include the development of a platform and the creation of a roadmap for further strengthening institutional support and supporting the economic development of local communities.
Dženana Pindžo-Mekić is a professional counselor at the KJU “Family Counseling Center”. She has a master’s degree in sociology and is an academic painter. Dženana’s dedication to improving her work led her to complete numerous training courses. Her favorites include youth worker training courses and the art therapy training she is currently pursuing.
She views employment mentoring as an ideal opportunity to work closely with young people while tracking their professional and personal growth and helping them develop into outstanding employees and strong individuals. She believes young people are often overlooked in the labor market and is particularly focused on helping them improve their quality of life by developing skills and building connections with employers.
Her motivation to become an employment mentor stemmed from her desire to support others and the opportunity to bring positive change to someone’s life.
When asked about how the employment mentoring process influenced her, Dženana says: “As mentors work to identify the mentee’s interests, strengthen their skills, and open them to new perspectives, mentors also have the opportunity to reflect on and reassess their own attitudes, desires, and interests. I’ve definitely learned from young people and seen firsthand that there are no limits—everything is possible with proper prioritization.”
While Dženana enjoys her work, employment mentoring is a very demanding process that has its own challenges. However, with creativity and strong organizational skills, she always manages to give the best support for her mentees.
Dženana values honest and open conversations most when working with mentees, as they allow her to truly understand their interests, needs, desires, and potential.
Dženana highlights the importance of employment mentoring for the economic development of our country, saying: “Employment mentoring helps reduce unemployment, addresses social challenges, and creates opportunities for those who are often overlooked in the labor market. With local and global labor shortages, rapid market changes, and technological advancements, now is the critical moment to implement meaningful changes and processes like this.”
For Dženana, empowering individuals is crucial in developing the local economy and strengthening these young people’s communities.
Drawing on inspiration from her work with mentees, Dženana sent a message for others who work with youth: “Only through perseverance, openness, active listening, and joint decision-making can we achieve concrete solutions in youth work.”
The Institute for Youth Development KULT is implementing the project “Social Mentoring for Youth in BiH” within a broader regional project, “Social Inclusion of Disadvantaged Groups in the Western Balkans (SoRi III),” which is implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Institute is developing a social mentoring approach for work integration, based on the methodology created by the Association for Research, Communication, and Development PUBLIC from Skopje.
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