UNICEF Innovations Lab Kosovo cultivates innovations for the benefit of Kosovo's youth. While Kosovo is the youngest region in Europe-with more than half of its population under 25 years old-far too many youth lack ways to participate in the processes that affect them. Innovations Lab projects give Kosovo youth the opportunity to impact their own lives, and those of their peers, by helping them turn their social innovation ideas into reality.
More than a decade after peace returned to Kosovo in 1999, and even after Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence, Kosovo faces the looming crisis of a disenfranchised generation - the very same youth who are to carry the country into the future, and who make up more than half of the population in Europe's "youngest" nation, are overwhelmingly excluded from the political and economic processes that impact their lives.
Recognizing that Kosovo's massive youth population are integral to the nation's future, UNICEF Kosovo's Innovation Lab emphasizes youth participation, social entrepreneurship, and skill-building. The Lab acts as a social impact project incubator, inviting Kosovo's youth to submit social innovation ideas for funding and mentorship, and in so doing, forming a community of young change-makers empowered with the skills, experience, and support to better their futures and those of their peers.
While the goal of the Lab is youth empowerment and skill-building, the greatest strength of the Lab is the vision of its youth participants, who build on the support the Lab offers to solve any number of pressing needs in their communities - everything from developing a portal to report and map damaged infrastructure throughout Kosovo, to developing educational programming for young children, to creating a library of accessible learning materials for the visually impaired.
This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Excel file (projdoc.xls).
