Since the third year of activities, within the scope of the regular project activities aimed at increasing the opportunities for a sustainable reintegration of the discharged defence personnel into civilian life, the NTF has developed a cooperation with different strategic partners including different business incubators already active in Serbia.


One of the working spaces renovated by the NTF within the BIC Nis

Those contacts not only widen the opportunities for a successful reintegration into civilian life but also allow the establishment of synergies and cooperation that have a positive effect on the long term impact as well as cost-effectiveness of the project. In the first half of the fourth year of project implementation the NTF continued to strengthen and expand those links and especially those started during the third year with the business incubator in the city of Nis and the different governmental institutions dealing with business incubation.


BIC Niš, Reception Hall

During this period, the NTF/MoD has organised a range of meetings with the Ministry of Economy and Regional Development, National Employment Service (NES) and Ministry of Finance to ensure the continuation of the cooperation between those business incubators already dealing with the NTF and the relevant government institutions, after the end of the NTF project.

On the operational side, the placement of NTF beneficiaries into existing incubators has also continued in a very successful way. Looking at the reports from the already placed beneficiaries, it is clear that such support has drastically increased their opportunities for successfully reintegration into civilian life; Mr. Nebojša Milenković (bookkeeper) and Mr. Miodrag Ilić (metal processing) that joined the BIC Prokuplje and BIC Niš represent a concrete example of that success.

As the two beneficiaries stated to the NTF, the BIC provides them with comprehensive support services, resources and a stable environment at the early stage of their business minimizing all those problems that, especially due to the lack of business experience, their colleagues, also assisted by the NTF, are facing. Moreover, being placed into an incubator, their companies are seen as more reliable by the public facilitating the access to potential clients and business partners.

In the Niš BIC the intervention of the NTF has also looked at the renovation of business premises to accommodate three additional NTF beneficiaries. Those renewed working spaces will be in the future jointly managed by PRISMA and the BIC so that, even after the end of the NTF program, the MoD will be able to place its discharged personnel in that facility. Although the PRISMA beneficiaries will not be automatically included within the BIC but will have to meet the BIC entry criteria, this mechanism will contribute to create some concrete reintegration tools that PRISMA could use after the end of the NTF.

To give long term self-sustainability to the NTF/MoD cooperation with business incubators intervention, the NTF investments have been combined with a training/coaching module for two PRISMA staff. That training, organized during the period September 2008—June 2009, has increased the capacity of PRISMA to support the reintegration into civilian life of its beneficiaries creating the basis for a more systematic approach to these activities after the end of the NTF project.