Building Bridges between Stuttgart and Kosovo: Vocational Education, Business and the Diaspora in Dialogue

The Chamber of Skilled Crafts Region Stuttgart has been engaged in Kosovo for around three years – from initiating business contacts and providing motor vehicle training vehicles to the training of trainers. In conversation with Sophia Grunert, Anette Groschupp, Jannik Clauß and Christian Binnig explain how the Stuttgart Kosovo Action Committee brings together business, politics, civil society and the Kosovar diaspora, what role the engagement plays in establishing dual vocational education in Kosovo – and what benefits both sides gain from it.

The interview was conducted on 26 August 2026.

The Chamber of Skilled Crafts Region Stuttgart is engaged in Kosovo in many different ways. Anette, could you give us an overview of the various components of this engagement?

Anette Groschupp: With pleasure. Our engagement in Kosovo has one core goal: we want to strengthen vocational education there, and cooperation specifically in the skilled crafts, while at the same time building bridges between Kosovo and the Stuttgart region. It is not so much about individual projects, but about different forms of cooperation. This includes exchanging with our partners on the ground, holding talks with various institutions, but also with companies – and participating in economic and professional exchange formats on site. A good example is the German Kosovo Economic Forum on 28 and 29 October in Pristina, organised by the Kosovo-German Business Association. In this context, we will promote the forum among our companies, travel there with a business delegation and take part in cooperation talks. We will also be available as contact persons for our cooperation in a Baden-Württemberg special area as part of the supporting programme.

I have started without even mentioning what our cooperation is actually called: the Stuttgart Kosovo Action Committee, which we founded in January of this year. Just this morning we had one of our regular meetings, and once again it was quite remarkable to see in how many different contexts we have already worked together and where we see points of connection everywhere. This is truly concrete cooperation – first and foremost through learning, listening and seeing what individual organisations are doing.

Another area in which we work together, though here at home, is the AMB., the general mechanical engineering trade fair in Stuttgart. It takes place in mid-September, from 15th to 19th September 2026. On this occasion, too, a delegation from Kosovo will travel to us and hold cooperation talks – and we will certainly organise one or two company visits here on site as well.

How did this highly diverse cooperation come about?

Anette Groschupp: We have been in active exchange for about three years. It started with the fact that a connection between Baden-Württemberg and Kosovo has existed for a very long time, but at that time no cooperation had yet been established with the skilled crafts. We then said: we need to look on the ground at which partners are suitable for us and how we can advance projects with them on an equal footing. Quite quickly, we organised very successful networking evenings at our Chamber of Skilled Crafts, to which high-ranking politicians from Kosovo also travelled, for example the Minister for Foreign Trade. That generated a great deal of visibility. From this, together with the Kosovar Consulate in Stuttgart, we said: let’s make more of it, let’s bring more partners on board – everyone who is active and interested in the cooperation and in networking together. Of course, everyone has their own thematic focuses and is embedded in other systems. For example, we also have partners from the Enterprise Europe Network on board, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) of course, the Kosovo Chamber of Commerce (KCC), and also ministry representatives on both sides.

Impressions from the meetings of the Stuttgart Kosovo Action Committee. Photo: Chamber of Skilled Crafts Region Stuttgart

Around 93,000 people with Kosovar citizenship live in Baden-Württemberg, more than 4,000 of them in the city of Stuttgart alone, as data from the Federal Statistical Office shows. What role does this Kosovar diaspora in the Stuttgart region play for your engagement?

Anette Groschupp: It plays a very large role, because this Kosovar community includes a very high proportion of businesses – many construction companies, of course, but also businesses in other skilled crafts sectors. That was one of our first learnings at the first networking evening, to which we had also invited our member companies: the businesses were extremely pleased and curious about what could emerge from this network, because they are very interested in networking activities. Kosovars usually return to their homeland in the summer and are connected not only through family, but also very strongly in business contexts. We would like to use this diaspora as a bridge – on the one hand for the business activities of our companies, but of course also the other way round, for business contacts that could be of interest to Kosovar companies in Germany.

What are the most important results of the cooperation so far?

Jannik Clauß: In addition to the structural connections that Anette has already mentioned, which were created or revived – these connections existed in the past, and I believe we have made a good contribution to bringing them back to life – I will briefly focus on the education side; Anette has already said quite a bit about business development and foreign trade. We have already been able to carry out several activities in this short time. Everything needs lead time; you have to be patient – that is perhaps the first learning when initiating such cooperations.

We succeeded in bringing motor vehicle training materials from our Bildungsakademie to a school in Kosovo as a very first step, so that the school there is equipped with new, above all practice-oriented teaching materials. The teachers will come to us next month and receive training, because we had realised: the teaching material was there, but it had not been used so far. That is why we are now taking the second step and training the teachers on how to use this material and integrate it well into their teaching.

Hand-over of the teaching material. Photo: Chamber of Skilled Crafts Region Stuttgart

What kind of material is it – more like machinery, or books and worksheets?

Jannik Clauß: These are vehicles that have been specially prepared for teaching in inter-company training – here with us in Stuttgart, but I suspect they also exist in other training academies in Germany. They were mainly combustion-engine cars that no longer corresponded to the latest state of technology for us. For Kosovo they are – and beyond that, in fact – still perfectly adequate. We did not want to throw them away, so we said: let’s make something good out of them and pass them on for further use.

Our second major project, which we have carried out or are still working on, is a training of trainers – in Germany equivalent to Part 4 of the master craftsman training. Together with the GIZ, we implemented a course for the trainer certificate. We trained multipliers who are due to start training in-company trainers themselves in the near future. Further measures are still pending here as well: we have a follow-up planned, we want to provide further training and follow up – because experience shows that one-off training is not enough for the participants to be truly enabled to deliver these courses themselves, and for a lot to stick with them.

What experiences have you had with the results of the SCIVET projects in your vocational education activities?

Jannik Clauß: Since this was personally my first education project abroad in which we designed a course, these materials were crucial for my orientation, especially at the beginning. And also afterwards: you mentioned the guide for trainers for action-oriented vocational education – our instructor used it. She had her own course materials to design the course in Kosovo, and she added the guide. That gave her a very good picture of what makes sense to implement in Kosovo and what does not. The whole thing was complemented by results we had developed in a stakeholder workshop in Kosovo. So we had a good interplay between the Chamber’s own materials, the SCIVET materials and the results from the stakeholder workshop – very good guidance from all the materials available to us.

What hurdles have you already encountered in your engagement, and what challenges do you still face?

Jannik Clauß: On the hurdles: it was a bumpy start in many respects. The partners first have to get to know each other and learn to work together. There are cultural differences that have to be taken into account – especially when planning a course format. In Germany, you invite people to a course at 9 a.m., and everyone is seated and ready to start. In Kosovo, you invite people for 9 a.m. and then plan to start around 9:30 or 10 a.m., once everyone has chatted with everyone else, everyone has had a cup of coffee, everyone has been outside once more for a cigarette, and so on. These are the small cultural differences that create time pressure from the very beginning, especially when implementing a course.

Of course, political framework conditions also play a major role – particularly in a country like Kosovo, where we did not yet know the political conditions so well. We also have to take into account the changes that occur again and again, especially on the political side – and the fact that not everyone likes working with everyone else, just as is the case in Germany. Our approach has always been to bring everyone together. Sometimes it worked more or less well, or only on the second attempt. But we keep practising, and with the Action Committee we have created, we have laid a very good foundation for this.

The challenge is quite clearly to continue the whole thing, not to let go, not to slacken – because otherwise there is always the danger that it will fizzle out. Although we have now reached a point where we have so many people here in Germany, or rather in Baden-Württemberg, on board who bring enormous commitment. So it is no longer a cooperation between just two institutions.

Participants in a Train the Trainer Course. Photo: Chamber of Skilled Crafts Region Stuttgart

Who are your key supporters in this cooperation?

Christian Binnig: I will try to paint the bigger picture. As Anette and Jannik have described, our approach is: we must bring together economic, political and civil society actors – from both sides – in order to frame vocational education cooperation processes appropriately and implement them successfully. For us, it is always a challenge to find and sort partners, on both the Kosovar and the German side: where are the common interests, where can partnerships be established in a lasting and sustainable way?

On the German side, we are very much in talks and exchange with political stakeholders who support and accompany the project. At the state level, these include the State Ministry and the Ministry of Economic Affairs of Baden-Württemberg. In addition, the Stuttgart Kosovo Action Committee includes the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, as well as the GIZ partners as the implementing body on the ground – and of course actors such as the ZDH, the German Confederation of Skilled Crafts and Small Businesses. We are glad that we can always turn to you, Sophia, for specialist questions. That is the political sphere on the German side, flanked by economic activities: our companies on the ground, the diaspora businesses that truly build the bridge between the two worlds for us, and the companies in our Chamber district.

And then the Kosovar side: here, as a Chamber of Skilled Crafts, we involve our partner organisations, our “mirror images” – for example the KCC, the Kosovo Chamber of Commerce, and the Kosovo-German Business Association as chamber structures. Particularly in the area of capacity building, we support each other and engage in the exchange of experience: what works for us, what works in Kosovo, where are the common interests, questions and solutions? Mirroring this, there are government organisations in Kosovo: we were able to establish contacts with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Economic Affairs, particularly regarding the introduction of dual vocational education – I will say a few more words about that in a moment. In Kosovo, this is still a fairly young plant that we want to help grow. There we also approach local associations, companies, school authorities and municipalities to see where the needs of the schools, the companies and the various partners lie.

It really is a large, colourful bouquet – and in our experience, this young Stuttgart Kosovo Action Committee is exactly the ecosystem needed to plan, organise and implement vocational education topics in a needs-oriented and effective way on the ground – also building on our expertise in Germany.

You had announced that you would elaborate on the topic of dual vocational education – please go ahead.

Christian Binnig: In 2021/22 – that’s when, I believe, the first profiles were introduced – Kosovo opened up to dual vocational education, against a market background in which an aspiring Kosovar economy, including not only industrial companies but also many skilled crafts businesses, wants to offer its goods and services on the European market. In this context, the partners on the Kosovar government side realised: education is a very decisive key to making companies competitive. When educational processes, training qualifications and educational content correspond to a European level, that is relevant to gaining a foothold on the European market with finished products of the required quality. This is how the Kosovar government decided to introduce dual vocational education – and that is something that is very exciting to observe.

The German dual education system has grown organically over roughly 800 years. It is fascinating to experience how a society rethinks education at the drawing board – without a history of dual vocational education and training – and tries to efficiently transfer and adapt what works and what helps to strengthen its own companies on the European market. We, too, benefit from this cooperation, because one begins to question: why have we actually always done it this way? Where might there be advantages to a pragmatic, different approach? That is an exciting learning field for us as well.

Kosovo has meanwhile converted 18 occupational profiles to dual training, modelled on the German system, with a strong in-company component and a vocational school component. The in-company component in particular is where the project Jannik mentioned comes into play: during the introduction, companies eventually ask the question: “I’m training now – and how does that actually work?” They did not know that in the past. For us, it is a wonderful situation to contribute, in this development phase, the expertise we have built up in the Chamber of Skilled Crafts and in our own Bildungsakademie over the past 45 years: experiential knowledge, structures, processes. And at the same time, we repeatedly find: they do things differently – and there is a reason for that. It may not work for us, but it works there, and it works better there. A truly exciting process.

Anette Groschupp: May I add something? It is very interesting to involve the diaspora businesses, or the diaspora as a whole, because they know the understanding of dual vocational education from our country and can convey it – and promote it. I believe this is exactly what needs to be worked on: the willingness of businesses to pay young people, to train them and to make themselves available as trainers. That is a great opportunity.

Jannik Clauß: That is the big crux in Kosovo: the companies have to be on board. Currently, vocational education is predominantly school-based – with the exception of the 18 dual profiles. So things are moving forward, and there are more and more training occupations in Kosovo that are carried out in dual form. The problem is always: how do I get the companies on board? The best role models are, as Anette says, the German-Kosovar companies that provide dual training in Germany, know how it works, explain to their acquaintances in Kosovo how it works – and convince them that they themselves have to invest in vocational education.

You have the diaspora as training ambassadors, so to speak. Do you also deploy people with this background as instructors – for the training courses, for example?

Jannik Clauß: Exactly, we had a Kosovar instructor who delivered the first training course in Albanian – that was very important to us – who trains apprentices himself and used our material, which the Chamber of Skilled Crafts had developed together with our Part 4 instructor, and which the Kosovar instructor then delivered in Kosovo.

Does the Kosovar instructor live in Kosovo or in Germany?

Jannik Clauß: In Germany. He lives in Germany and provides dual training here – that is important, because he needed this expertise to deliver the training.

Christian Binnig: That was also the benefit for us: it was someone from a diaspora association active here in Germany who truly knows both worlds and can operate in both. For the implementation of such training courses, it is helpful when it is not a foreign organisation in a foreign language or in English suddenly showing up on site, but when you can draw on instructors who build this bridge.

Visit to a training workshop in the context of the Stuattgart Kosovo Action Committee. Photo: Chamber of Skilled Crafts Region Stuttgart

How should the cooperation develop or be shaped in the future? Do you already have ideas?

Christian Binnig: That is a great question – and indeed, the ideas change daily as the network we are assembling in the Stuttgart Kosovo Action Committee grows. We do not see vocational education cooperation as an isolated process or fragment that is implemented in a project context, where you tick the box and then it sustains itself. It sustains itself when it is carried by the various actors on the ground and here. With the Stuttgart Kosovo Action Committee, we want to lay the foundation for a lasting network of economic, political, but also civil society education actors.

Our goal is, on the one hand, to grow the network in terms of people and to broaden the range of topics. We are currently working on three interconnected thematic areas within the network, which we have already hinted at: B2B, education and capacity building. Educational processes do not happen in an isolated space – there are economic and political framework conditions, and everything influences each other. We are trying to win more partners and broaden the range. One topic that is newly emerging and increasingly occupying us is the empowerment of women, especially in rural areas, through integration into educational and work processes – a topic that is very close to the hearts of our Kosovar colleagues and which we are happy to support.

For us, the network is something to which the Chamber of Skilled Crafts gladly offers a space, a platform. That does not mean that we as a Chamber have to be involved in every form of cooperation between the actors – but to offer this platform to even enter into exchange: what are the pressing questions, the different interests, what could joint solutions be, and how can they be advanced collectively? We talked about organic growth earlier – that is exactly what we are doing at the moment. Where this will lead in the future is relatively open, but that is what the network lives on: there is not one fixed goal that we want to have achieved in five years, unlike in a project context. We listen to each other first, ask questions and see where the fields of cooperation are and how we can tackle them in the future. That makes the whole thing very fluid, but also very flexible – and that is what we value about this network.

Anette Groschupp: May I briefly add something here? It fits perfectly. We had our meeting this morning, and it was also about our roadmap – because we have of course already given some thought to what is coming in the future. The roadmap is in English, but it summarises very well where we want to go: we want to strengthen German-Kosovar ties and advance joint projects – in the areas of B2B and diaspora engagement, of course in the major field of dual vocational education, but also in the expert exchanges, that is, this capacity building: how can we learn from each other? What do we do differently? What do the Kosovars perhaps even do better because they have different conditions in their ecosystem? And of course, the topic of women empowerment is also very much in focus. We are hoping for the positive energy there, because it is not always so prominent in our minds either.

Powerpoint slide prepared for the Stuattgart Kosovo Action Committee. Picture: Chamber of Skilled Crafts Region Stuttgart

To play devil’s advocate: you offer a space for the Kosovars to cooperate – could you not simply leave it to them how they do that among themselves? What is the Chamber of Skilled Crafts Region Stuttgart’s interest in this cooperation, and what benefit do you derive from it?

Christian Binnig: Here, too, there are many aspects. On the one hand, every form of educational cooperation – no matter with which partner and where – always works in two directions: you transfer on the one side, but you also get something back. You learn from each other mutually. Sharpened to educational cooperation, this means: in this process of supporting the implementation of dual vocational education in Kosovo, we are learning how we can improve, change, redesign and, in many respects, modernise training here at home. That is, so to speak, a short-term, education-specific quick win.

But if we see the whole thing as an overall process: we are also supporting our companies with it. When companies ask: “Why don’t you get involved locally in Biberach or Reutlingen, why are you going to Kosovo?”, then we say: at the moment when we contribute through education to strengthening the competitiveness of companies on the ground, we create opportunities for our companies here to cooperate with companies in Kosovo – opportunities to find suppliers and buyers for skilled crafts products. And we create opportunities for businesses that want to expand or grow and are, for example, thinking about setting up in Kosovo or establishing a production facility. Education is a structural factor for reliability of expectations: if I open a site in Kosovo, it is not only a good fit fiscally or in terms of the production facility – I can also recruit qualified personnel there, to a standard that I know from Germany and now also find there. When we get involved as a Chamber, we are thereby also and especially committed to the concerns of our companies and their interests: in cooperation, in finding cooperation partners on the ground, and in making Kosovo an attractive destination for German companies that would like to provide parts of their production or services abroad.

Anette Groschupp: In Baden-Württemberg, we have the situation that we are a very attractive destination for the immigration of skilled workers. In this context, we repeatedly find that qualifications from Kosovo are not so readily recognisable, and that opportunities for immigration are then not available – residence permits cannot be used that could give skilled workers a better basis for their work here. In most cases, they can only come via the Western Balkans regulation. In this respect, our work also contributes to the mobility of skilled workers – although we quite clearly have no interest in recruitment projects in Kosovo. That is not what we do. But we are very aware that there is a great deal of interest in Kosovo in coming to Germany, working here and making use of the training opportunities here.