The USAID-funded Up to Youth Activity in Kosovo supported young people to play a positive role in shaping the country’s social, economic, and political future, with a strong focus on increasing youth resilience to social exclusion and extremism.
The project built youth capacities in soft and job-related skills, strengthened their agency to collaborate with community resilience actors, and provided authentic leadership opportunities through campaigns, projects, and social ventures. It also fostered enabling environments for youth empowerment by linking networks that amplify youth voices and sustain positive change.
Within this framework, Lens played a key role by conducting youth mapping to ensure that young people could identify community needs suitable to be addressed through social ventures and enterprises.
Furthermore, Lens integrated practical economic skills into youth trainings on (social) entrepreneurship and led the implementation of a comprehensive internship scheme, preparing, placing, and supporting youth in six-month internships with selected enterprises, thereby offering disadvantaged young people valuable opportunities for experience, growth, and future employment.