When I first started my volunteering, I already knew a little about the Interreg Programs, but it wasn’t until I started contributing to them through the Regional Council in Nouvelle Aquitaine that I understood their extent and impact. Something to highlight about my host organization is that they take part in four Interreg Programs, therefore I’m lucky enough to be discovering them as well as European cooperation through my IVY Reporter role. So far, I have been participating in two of them: Atlantic Area and SUDOE.
The Atlantic Area (AA) covers the western part of the Atlantic Ocean and includes all regions of Ireland and Portugal, as well as several French and Spanish regions close to or on the Atlantic Ocean coast. Due to the AA’s geographical and maritime characteristics, the challenges that it aims to tackle are balanced economic development and climate change. This characteristic, jointly with the coast-hinterland interrelationships, corresponds to the main approach to the Program’s conception.
Interreg SUDOE is a European Union funding program to support regional development and cohesion in the regions of south-west Europe. To address the common challenges faced by the SUDOE regions, such as climate change, social cohesion and territorial balance, it supports cooperation projects between entities in the Member States that make up this area.
The Programs support public and private entities that act together to build solutions that address the transnational challenges of these vast territories in order to improve the quality of life of citizens.
What have I been up to?
During this time, I began by getting to know about the Programs and the projects they fund, to understand their main objectives, the principles and the results expected from the cooperation so I can communicate about it. I also had the opportunity to assist in French and cross-border meetings where I could observe how the partners exchange and work together. This has been immensely interesting and helpful to deepen my insight on European cooperation.
In addition, I’m currently elaborating summaries of projects for the Atlantic Area Program that will be useful to communicate about them. By participating in this task, I have had the opportunity to know more in detail about the different projects, their goals and discovered the broad themes the Program covers.
One of my next missions will consist of creating catalogues with summaries of projects from these Programs to publish via different communication tools and share the results in Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
What do I enjoy the most?
Getting to see how different cooperation Programs and projects develop is very enriching. This experience is helping me enhance my abilities in communication and knowledge about cooperation. I am also enjoying learning about different projects that I get to contribute to because it can be very inspiring, especially the cultural and climate change ones since those are the topics that I personally like the most.
– Ana, IVY Reporter on Interreg Atlantic Area, SUDOE
