Human-centered social policies – the core of the joint UN Activate! programme

Dear partners and donors, dear colleagues and friends,

Please allow me to THANK YOU for attending SDG Pooled Fund - Partners’ Event, where there will be presented final results and activities of the UN Joint Programme on Social Protection.

At the very beginning, I would firstly like to give special thanks to our donors – the UN Members States, the EU, international agencies, private sector and individuals - for recognizing the importance of this program, as without your support, the implementation of this program would not be feasible nor possible.  

Additionally, many thanks to our key implementing partners, all institutions from Montenegro with whom we are cooperating on a daily basis – Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Economic Development and Tourism, Employment Agency and local bureaus, Montenegrin Employers Federation, Centres for Social Work, civil society organizations. In addition, special thanks to all the people in Montenegro – the beneficiaries who trusted the UN System and who hopefully experienced benefits from programmatic activities implemented jointly with our CSO partners.

I would, of course, especially like to thank to Mrs. Edina Desic, State Secretary, Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, and to Lisa Kurbiel, Head of the Joint SDG Fund – for sharing their welcoming remarks with us.

Last but not the least, many thanks to the colleagues from our UN agencies – UNDP, UNICEF, ILO, UNHCR and IOM - who were diligently working on achieving objectives and results of this program, together with our implementing partners, always bearing in mind positive effects that it will have on end users, on people of Montenegro.

This is the final meeting with the donors and partners. This project fits directly in the National Strategy for Sustainable Development 2030, under the goal of stimulating employability and social inclusion and is of course aligned with the Integrated UN Programme – UNDAF 2017-2021 focus on social inclusion.

The intervention is timely, even more than we expected when the programme started. The implementation of JP Activate! was very already relevant when it was commencing and is even more important now when it is coming to an end, due to COVID19 and protracted crisis that the world, and Montenegro as part of it, are facing.

The aim of this program was to strengthen the capacity of the social protection system in Montenegro to better serve people in need, by improving the effectiveness of social policies, as well as by delivering social services, especially to the most vulnerable groups. In light of the socio-economic crisis caused by COVID-19, Activate! has become even more relevant, given the increasing number of people that are at risk of falling into poverty and in need of social protection. Activate! activities thus focused on gathering real-time evidence of the impact of COVID-19, supporting the Government with policy simulations to model the potential impact of social protection reforms, using human centred design for improving service delivery, as well as ensuring first time access to social protection for the most vulnerable groups.

The key acceleration strategy of this project is innovation, at both policy/system level as well as at service-design level:

• at policy/system level, the programme employed  policy forecasting  to ascertain likely impact of social protection interventions, with the focus on poverty-reduction. The aim was always to support decision-makers to accelerate evidence-based measures, whether through the social protection system or other means. Once modeling is achieved, policies with the optimum ratio between impact and cost were shared with the decision-makers, to be considered for further legislative activity and implementation design. 

Just as importantly, such a tool has the potential to be replicated for other sectors and in connection to other social protection programmes, as well as other policy areas. Hopefully, the model will continue to develop into one which will respond to the need decentralized planning and costing within Montenegro, to model local, and national level policies.

• at service-design level, human-centered design supported co-production of services, active participation of targeted groups, and strengthened government-citizen feedback. Novel approaches to youth empowerment and employability were reviewed using participatory monitoring and evaluation tools, such as randomized control trials, real-time feedback, or user satisfaction surveys. If scaled-up and institutionalized, such services are more likely to directly correspond and satisfy specific needs of beneficiaries. This is essential for the future implementation of the Youth Guarantee. Adolescents and youth were supported and empowered by equipping them the social-emotional skills, as well as improved self-coping skills and resiliency through mental health and well-being support.

There will be more words later about the objectives and results, so I will leave that part to her, but would simply like to wrap up, very briefly, key achieved results in the last two and half years:

• Developed tools for planning and scenarios for implementing more effective social policies to reduce at risk of poverty and inequality.
• Using human-centred design methodology, a pilot solution for activation of vulnerable groups designed.
• Online pilot service for digital skills development supported.
• The activation programme within the Employment Agency was realized for young women with preschool children.
• Supported young women with a grant to open and register their businesses.
• Resolved the legal status of ex-Yugoslav refugees and stateless persons/persons at risk of statelessness.
• Supported victims of trafficking and conduct an anti-trafficking-related awareness campaign.
• The Social-Emotional Skills Training with adolescents was realized.
• By the end of the month, adolescents will go through well-being and mental health workshops, and a new mental health portal will be online to support adolescents and youth in Montenegro.

Once again, many thanks to our donors, partners and colleagues. I am looking forward to the rest of the meeting and I would not like to give the floor to Mrs. Edina Desic, State Secretary, Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare.