The idea is simple: connect young people from the Western Balkans with opportunities to learn, volunteer and grow beyond their local borders. Today, that idea is a reality thanks to a network of six Contact Points, supported by SALTO South East Europe, reaching thousands of young people and hundreds of organisations across the region.
The programmes behind this work are Erasmus+ and the European Solidarity Corps, two European Union initiatives that give young people the chance to study, volunteer, train or work abroad. For many, these are more than programmes. They are the first real opportunity to see the world, gain new skills, and return home with ideas that change their communities. The role of the Contact Points is to make sure these opportunities are not distant or abstract, but reachable, understandable and available to everyone.
In Montenegro, ADP-Zid has been building this bridge for three decades. What started as a small local initiative has become the go-to organisation for anyone in the country who wants to volunteer or study abroad. Young people come with an idea, and they leave with a project. The organisation also supports companies, institutions and civil society groups that want to grow through international cooperation. As they often say, they do not wait for better times to arrive. They create them.
In Albania, Beyond Barriers has been making Europe accessible since 2011. Thousands of young people, youth workers, schools and institutions have discovered international opportunities through their work, especially those who had assumed this was not for them. The organisation has a clear mission: to make sure that Europe belongs to everyone, regardless of background, ability or identity. Their support begins with a first idea and continues until a project is successfully realised.
In Kosovo, GAIA has been turning invisible opportunities into real ones. Through their work, young people now know that volunteering abroad is something they can actually do. More than that, GAIA connects local organisations with the wider European youth community, so that knowledge, creativity and energy flow in both directions. Their work is rooted in the belief that impact does not stop when a project ends. It continues through the people and communities it touches.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Youth Center John Paul II has been opening doors to Europe for eighteen years. It is a trusted place where young people discover volunteering, build confidence and return home with new energy. The Centre does not simply inform. It walks with people through every step, from the first question to the first experience abroad.
The newest member of the network, LDA Mostar, has already shown that new does not mean inexperienced. In their first months as a Contact Point, they met with the City Council of Mostar and the Ministry of Civil Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and gathered more than eighty-five organisations at their online information day. They are building bridges, and not just the stone ones.
From Šabac, Serbia, Udruženje Svetlost brings volunteering opportunities to young people in rural areas, because talent and dreams do not live only in big cities. Hundreds of young people have been guided through their first steps toward international projects, one at a time. Their message is simple but powerful: a single project can completely shift a young person’s trajectory.
This is what twenty years of cooperation looks like. Six countries, countless lives changed, one network and it is just the beginning.