Hi there! My name is Maria, and I am volunteering in Trieste as IVY at the European Interreg Italy Slovenia Programme. I am from Genoa, and four years ago I decided to move to Trieste for study reasons: I left a beautiful city in Liguria and I moved to another beautiful city, even though smaller than Genoa. When I moved to Trieste, I never imagined this city would become my home. And yet here I am. This city offered me a lot of opportunities, including the possibility to take part in the initiative Interreg Volunteer Youth. Three months have passed since I got involved in this unique experience. Trieste is a border city, with a border identity: is there a better place to promote cross-border

After my last working experience in Italy I was looking for a volunteering opportunity abroad on the portal European Solidarity Corps. Only then I learnt more about the opportunities offered by Interreg Volunteering Youth and I was immediately fascinated by the impact of EU Interreg projects. Among the several IVY opportunities available, I found a project that suited at best my skills and interests. Visiting the EU Parliament with IVY during the EU Week of Regions and Cities I am currently volunteering at the German-based organization European Institute for Innovation-Technology (EIfI-Tech), which is an applied science organization supporting the adaptions of regions to respond to the pace

Ever heard of Jaca? Well, until three months ago neither had I. It’s a small city in Northern Spain, right at the foot of the Pyrenees and 25 km from the border with France. And that’s where I’m living now. You guessed it: I’m an IVY, a young European volunteering at the local Interreg programme, which is called POCTEFA. Poctewhat? What it means is “Spain-France-Andorra Cross-border Cooperation Programme”... only, in Spanish. What it does is co-finance cooperation projects across the Pyrenees to support the region’s sustainable development. These projects (there are dozens of them) range from promoting local culture and artists, to building cycle lanes, to setting up a cross-border hospital

It’s been almost two months since i joined the program ALCOTRA. ALCOTRA is one of the European cross-border cooperation programmes. It covers the Alpine territory between France and Italy. Upon my arrival, I worked on the organisation of the annual event of the program. This year the event was very special. It was a two days-event, we decided to organise it in association with UTMB, a mondial which is amondial trail-running event (almost 10.000 runners from 100 countries).The event took place at the mountain pass in the Alps on the France–Italy (Le col du petit Saint-Bernard ; colle del piccolo San-Bernardo) at an altitude of 2 ,188m. In the light of this, a conference on sustainability and

INTERREG V-A ITALY-SLOVENIA: TRAIN PROJECT How is it possible to combine the development of diagnostic and therapeutic solutions with the analysis of massive quantity of data in a cross-border framework? TRAIN is the answer. TRAIN combines synergistically big data and disease patterns for creating a cross-border platform composed of validated kits useful to biomedical companies. Operating under the aegis of the European cross-border cooperation, TRAIN is a project funded by Interreg V-A Italy-Slovenia Programme that responds to the first thematic objective (OT) of the Programme, which is aimed at strengthening research, technological development and innovation. The six partners comprise high