Hi everyone! My name is Elisa, and I have been volunteering as an IVY Project Partner in Bodø, Norway, within the Nordic Bridge Project, part of the Interreg Northern Periphery and Arctic (NPA) Programme, hosted by Nord University. It has been two months since I arrived, and it has already been an inspiring learning experience!
What is Nordic Bridge project about?
Nordic Bridge is a challenge-driven digital portal connecting academia, students, and local stakeholders across the Northern Periphery and Arctic region.
In practice, this looks like the following: challenges are posted on the platform by public, private and community organisations, to which students and researchers can respond. This can lead to thesis, joint research projects and internships that are grounded in the actual needs of a region. This way, it gives municipalities and businesses access to fresh perspectives and research capacity that they might not otherwise have, while providing students and researchers with access to real-world challenges to work on, something that can otherwise be difficult to find independently.
As an Interreg Volunteer Youth, my role is centred on stakeholder engagement and communication. I take part in project meetings, co-creation workshops, and discussions related to the development of the Nordic Bridge digital portal. I help review and reflect on the feedback gathered from these sessions, which I find particularly interesting to be part of. Alongside this, I engage directly with youth organisations, and other non-academic stakeholders to help build community engagement around the Nordic Bridge concept, making sure young people become active partners in shaping the platform rather than passive users.
What cooperation looks like
Through this mission, I have also seen, very concretely, how much groundwork goes into building genuine cross-border cooperation, from partner coordination and stakeholder mapping to the more human side of building trust between people who do not yet know each other.
What I find most valuable about Nordic Bridge is that it does exactly this: it connects students, researchers, and organisations from Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Ireland, giving them a shared space to work together on challenges that matter, even though they may never have crossed paths otherwise. And honestly, it is exactly the kind of platform I wish I had access to as a student, especially when finding a thesis topic was never straightforward!
A learning experience
Beyond the daily tasks, I have also had the joy of discovering a new place to live, and the Arctic light and landscapes that come with it – along with the people who have welcomed me here. This is only the beginning, and I cannot wait to see where the coming months and this project will take me.
I encourage you to seize any opportunity to take part in an IVY experience: it is one of the most direct ways to understand what European cooperation is really about and also become part of it yourself.
– Elisa, IVY Project Partner at Nord University, for the Interreg project NORDIC BRIDGE, under the programme Interreg Northern Periphery and Arctic
