Hello everyone !
My name is Sara Smaniotto and I am an IVY at the Mission Opérationnelle Transfrontalière (MOT) in Paris, France. I joined the MOT nearly three months ago, and my experience has been very positive and enriching since the very beginning. Working on the Alcotraité project has given me the great opportunity to dive deeper into cross-border governance and cooperation, and to see bilateral obstacles and barriers becoming corner-stone opportunities for a brighter common future.
The Alcotraité project is funded by the Interreg France-Italy ALCOTRA programme and aims at strengthening cross-border cooperation and governance between Italian and French bordering regions and local communities. Focusing on specific objectives included in the bilateral Quirinal Treaty signed by Italy and France in 2021, Alcotraité addresses and aims at finding concrete solutions to overcome existing cross-border barriers in the fields of healthcare, biodiversity and public transport. Thanks to the active participation of all five regions at the terrestrial border (Regione Liguria, Regione Piemonte, Regione Autonoma Valle d’Aosta, Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and Région Auvergne Rhône-Alpes) and of the Mission Opérationnelle Transfrontalière (MOT) acting as a facilitator, Alcotraité favours multi-level bilateral cooperation and enables partners and stakeholders to be actively engaged in jointly identifying cross-border barriers, and in developing common solutions. The project, moreover, pays close attention to citizens’ needs and it allows stakeholders’ expression of ideas through a bottom-up approach.
During my experience as an IVY at the MOT I’ve been involved in various stimulating activities, that enabled me to grow personally and professionally and allowed me to make valuable contributions to the project. More precisely, I’ve been actively engaged in the analysis of the outcomes to a survey on cross-border obstacles launched in the summer and open to the public and to local actors living and operating in areas along the Italian-French border. The feedbacks received, and the conducted analysis, have been crucially important for us and for the project partners, as they have enabled us to better comprehend the practical cross-border barriers that local stakeholders face in their daily lives, and they have allowed us to support meaningful advancements in the project partners’ cross-border governance and cooperation – notably in the field of public transport and infrastructure. I’ve also been taking part in project-related meetings and working sessions, and I had the opportunity to attend the annual ad-hoc event organized in the framework of Alcotraité to celebrate the signing of the Quirinal Treaty – this year, the conference was hosted by Regione Piemonte in Turin. Finally, I am now involved in the organization of three territorial workshops, which will encourage discussions and exchanges to identify concrete solutions to the still-existing cross-border obstacles and to further proceed in joint cross-border cooperation.
I am really happy about my IVY experience, and I am very grateful for this opportunity!
– Sara, IVY Project Partner at MOT for Alcotraité Interreg project
