period ahead, with programme di- rector Ivan Brkljač. The Point of Return pro- gramme recently marked its first year of operations with the conference “Talent On- line 3.0”. What are all the things that have been done to date? “This year was very complex and complicated for the whole world, so you can imagine how challeng- ing it was for a young team that‘s just emerging. However, this kind of baptism of fire has strengthened our team in many ways, also enabling us to more quickly understand our capacities and be more committed to the people for whom we found- ed this initiative, and those are the members of our diaspora. The most important thing for us in the first year was to establish a direct channel of communication with our people who live all around the world and to hear their ideas, suggestions, prob- lems and challenges. When it comes to specifics, in the first year we had contact with more than 6,000 of our citizens who sought some form of assistance or adequate information from us. By providing relevant infor- mation, we build up our own credibil- ity among our people from abroad, as someone who‘s available to them, in their service and at their disposal, while the conference “Talent Gather- ing”, this year in the online version “Talent Online”, is just the crown on top of our work over the course of the entire year.” To what extent did the pan- demic disrupt your plans, or did it - in conditional terms - inspire some new projects and campaigns? - For a start, during the state of emergency we placed all of our ca- pacities at the disposal of our people who found themselves outside Ser- bia, in order to help them return to their home country as soon as pos- sible. We were contacted by sever- al thousand citizens in the first 20 days of the state of emergency, and we helped many of them return to their homeland at least a few days earlier, which means a lot to people
in such times of crisis. Apart from this, we are in the final stages of the research project “Mapping returnees during COVID-19”, which will help us form a more accurate picture of why people returned and what meas- ures would compel them to consid- er staying rather than re-emigrating. The third idea that emerged from this crisis is the campaign “Work from home - Work from Serbia”, within the scope of which the Point of Re- turn team created a digital brochure detailing all the advantages of work- ing from Serbia for all our people in the diaspora whose employers allow them to “work from home”. Debates about circular mi- grations have been common recently. How important are such trends actually? “We live in an ultra-modern, con- nected world in which the circula- tion of capital, resources and peo- ple is an everyday occurrence. It is true that the coronavirus has disrupt- ed all of that, but we hope that‘s all just temporary. In order for us to be part of that modern and connected world, when this pandemic passes, we must accept circular migration as something that‘s good and some- thing that we should strive towards. The departure and return of our peo- ple can bring great benefits to our society as a whole, because people who go abroad to gain knowledge and experience can bring the skills they acquire back to Serbia and help our national community to grow and become better than it was yesterday. Misija programa Tačka povratka je da pruži sve informacije / The mission of the Point of Return programme is to provide all information
Ivan Brkljač, director of the Point of Return programme Exchanging knowledge to reach new opportunities An idea that emerged from the crisis is the campaign 'Work from home - Work from Serbia', which is intended for all our people in the diaspora whose employers allow them to work from home. T he mission of the Point of Return programme is to provide members of the Serbian diaspo- ra with information on
all the ways to stay in contact with Serbia, as well as opportunities for gaining assistance and ensuring the circulation of information for in- dividuals wanting to return to the country. We discussed the challeng- es faced during the previous year and the repatriation of our talent- ed people, but also the goals of the
Serbia creates » Srbija stvara | 21
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