The best mentors of Serbia were selected at the "Mentor Award 2018"

The recognition "MENTOR AWARD 2018" to the most successful mentors in Serbia this year was awarded in 2 categories, for mature companies and for beginners, and the best mentor in both categories is Ljiljana Marković from the Regional Agency for Development and European Integration, Belgrade.

The second place in the category of mature enterprises was taken by Branko Brković from the Regional Agency for the Development of Eastern Serbia, and in the category of start-up companies, the second place was won by Milica Čukarić from the Regional Agency for Economic Development of Šumadija and Pomoravlje. The third place in the category of mature companies is shared by Nataša Jovanović from the Regional Development Agency "Zlatibor" and Saša Dedeić from the Regional Development Agency "Braničevo-Podunavlje", who also took third place in the category of start-up companies.

The event was opened by Radoš Gazdić, Acting. director of the Development Agency of Serbia, Katarina Obradović Jovanović, assistant minister in the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Serbia; Takaši Hibino, Deputy Head of the JICA Balkan Office and Ana Žegarac, Director of the International Cooperation Sector of the Development Agency of Serbia - Project Director.

The awarding of the "Mentor Award 2018" included the participation of all mentors from Serbia who provided mentoring services to companies. In this way, the mentors had the opportunity to show not only the projects they worked on, and the challenges they encountered, but also the solutions they applied to specific problems. The exchange of these experiences from the field proved to be the best way to further improve the work of all mentors. The best mentors were chosen by the mentors themselves, based on data on sales growth, development and innovative achievements in the companies they trained. Takashi Hibino (JICA Balkans), Ana Žegarac (director of the international cooperation sector of the Development Agency of Serbia) and Takashi Kimura (JICA consultant from Japan) awarded the best mentors. The awards ceremony was also attended by partners from the region, from Republika Srpska, Montenegro, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia.

After all these years, the project today counts 70 trained, certified mentors from 16 development agencies and more than 2,000 satisfied users. Our analyzes showed that in all those companies, mentoring contributed to increasing the number of employees by 10% over the last 14 years. increasing total revenues by more than 15%, and after evaluating all users, 98% of those who declare that they would use this service again. The project is quite developed, but we must constantly work on the promotion of good results and good practices by companies that through this project had available 25 hours of free mentoring for startups or 50 hours for mature companies. In this way, we will interest some new companies to apply, and this year alone from the program of RAS and the Program of the Standardized Set of Services of the Ministry of Economy we will have more than 400 new users - said Ana Žegarac, director of the international cooperation sector of the Development Agency of Serbia.

The presentation of awards and a two-day meeting of mentors is part of the project "Establishment and promotion of mentoring services for MSMEs in the countries of the Western Balkans", which the Development Agency Serbia has been developing for more than 12 years with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), with the support of the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Serbia. On this occasion, certificates were awarded to 14 new mentors who were trained this year.