Professional Sector: Training/Youth work, Youth policy, Youth research

First name: Sladjana

Last name: Petkovic

Nationality: Serbian

Languages:

• Serbian - native
• English - fluent
• Italian - A1
• German - A1
• Russian - A1 
• French - beginners

Postal Address: Novo Naselje bb

Country: Montenegro

Tel: +382 69 348 919

E-mail: petkovic.sladjana@gmail.com

Website: www.infomladi.me

Social networks (facebook, twitter etc…): Facebook, Linked-in, OSI LGI Social and Professional Network

Organisation: National Youth Steering Committee of Montenegro

Few words about me: Growing up, and living in a transitional society with transformational political systems in Western Balkans, made me passionate about the concepts, and the processes of social change and social innovation, especially in regards to their nature, complexity and socio-economic factors influencing it, as well as in regards to the power relations between the different stakeholders involved in those processes. Accordingly, the majority of my professional goals were associated with contribution to the participative development and effective implementation of the public policies, that were aligned with both citizen's needs and international trends.

Overall, my academic knowledge and professional competences are based on the combination of formal and non-formal education as well as work experience in grass-roots initiatives, international nonprofit organizations, governmental bodies and international advisory bodies. While practicing both activist and institutional approaches, I learned about the opportunities and challenges of cross-sectoral cooperation and involvement of the citizens and civil society organizations on one hand, and the constraints of the governmental institutions in community development and institutional reforms processes on the other. Furthermore, being involved in policy advising activities  on local, national and international level helped me to understand necessity of an integrated approach, by linking practice, research and the decision making process, in order to provide desirable social change in more comprehensive manner.

Thus, building multidisciplinary and sound academic record helped me to gain knowledge and skills in order to understand and examine complexity of the developmental processes: first, I graduated and took masters in Psychology at the University of Belgrade in Serbia, and then I have joined the international Erasmus Mundus Master Programme in Comparative Local Development (covering Political Science, Sociology, Law and Economics). at the University of Trento, Italy, in cooperation with the University of Regensburg, Germany, CORVINUS University of Budapest, and University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. In addition, I took the international specialist studies at the University of Jonkoping, Sweden focusing on Social Education and Community development in the Balkans, and recently deepened my knowledge and skills in policy analysis while attending the Open Society Institute LGI Policy Fellowship Programme in Budapest.

The experience of working with international organizations and governmental bodies (i.e. Open Society Fund Belgrade, Serbia; Forum Syd Balkans; UN missions, local and national governmental bodies in Montenegro, as well as the PEYR) enabled me to closer examine the relations between local-national and supra national bodies, and participate in creation and implementation of development strategies from local to national and international contexts and realities. In this regard, one of my main career goals is to contribute to the knowledge-based policy making, contribute to capacity building of the different stakeholders, especially young people and examine innovative ways of citizen/youth participation in scope of the EU youth related and innovation policies.

 My Curriculum Vitae