E2E Story – Zlatkov: Accreditations confirms the quality

Pirot: JOB Info centre in Pirot, “Education to Employment” project partner, started on the process to acquire the JPOA status (the status of a publicly recognised organiser of educational activities) in career guidance and counselling.

According to Mira Zlatkov who is in charge of on-the-job training, all this is done within the “Education to Employment” programme and in concert with all other local partners of this project.

When asked to, based on her experience, assess their references with regard to acquiring the accreditation, Zlatkov said that they have been addressing these issues for a long time and that thus far they have been working on developing the career guidance and counselling services and on education of their employees.

“Being the career centre, the Job info centre provides career information and counselling services. We started the procedure to acquire the status of a publicly recognised organiser of educational activities (JPOA). The JPOA status is obtained following the completed accreditation procedure and meeting of specific requirements. Considering at our services are presently at a quite high level, we would like have confirmation by obtaining the accreditation”, Mira Zlatkov said.

She stressed that the “Education to Employment” project provides them great support with regard to this.

“We have developed together the curriculum we needed in order to apply; we already have human capacity and we need to satisfy the predetermined spatial requirements. At the moment we are working on adapting our premises so as to meet these requirements, too”, she said.

She added that this is a challenge for all of them but, at the same time, it is also a new opportunity.

“Acquiring this status will confirm the quality of our services; our services will be standardised and that will broaden the range of the funds from which we would be able to finance our services”, Zlatkov said.

Numerous workshops and trainings

“In the past seven years of the “Education to Employment” programme implementation, we have organised a large number of career counselling workshops in primary and secondary schools in Pirotski County and in the Niš region, and on-the-job training in the territory of this County, as well as Nišavski County. There were trainings for CNC machine operators, welders, sewers, warehouse workers, barmen and waiters, workers in graphical sector, florists, workers in construction sector... A large number of young people went through these trainings and through career counselling. We tried to give suitable advice to them all and to support them in choosing their secondary school, university studies, or future profession.”

In the end Zlatkov highlighted that it is particularly important that more than 65 percent of young people who have undergone on-the-job training have got a job in the companies in which the training was organised. This is the ultimate goal and a chance for working even better.

Text Zoran Panić / Photo: Archive of the Job Info centre / Edited by Sandra Vlatković