Hello! My name is Stefano Spagnulo, I’m Italian, I’m 27 years old, and I am currently volunteering as an IVY Reporter with the Interreg Italia‑Francia Marittimo 2021‑2027 programme, a transnational cooperation initiative that brings together regions from Italy and France with the aim of fostering sustainable growth, innovation, and cohesion across the Mediterranean area.
“Interreg” is the European Union’s programme dedicated to cooperation between regions across national borders. It supports partnerships that work together to address shared challenges and create joint solutions with a real impact on local communities. Through programmes like Interreg Italia-Francia Marittimo 2021-2027, partners from Liguria, Toscana, Sardegna, Corsica, and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur collaborate to strengthen innovation, promote environmental sustainability, and foster closer ties between territories on both sides of the border.
As an IVY Reporter, my main responsibility is communication; I help convey the programme’s story, objectives, and impacts to wider audiences. This involves creating engaging content for social media, drafting posts and institutional text, and collaborating with project partners and beneficiaries to highlight results and opportunities for citizens and stakeholders. I’m also actively involved in capitalization and monitoring activities, where I support the team in gathering insights from projects, understanding best practices that emerge across different initiatives, and helping share those lessons within and beyond the programme.
Working in communication and capitalization has given me a unique chance to see how cooperation really unfolds on the ground: from sharing stories of small local projects to understanding how strategic actions strengthen social and economic ties across borders. Each day, I learn something new about European cooperation, about the complexity of cross‑border partnerships, and about how EU funds translate into real support for local communities and organisations.
Thanks to this experience, I’ve improved my skills in multilingual communication, digital storytelling, stakeholder engagement, and monitoring methodologies. I’ve also gained a deeper understanding of how projects are designed, monitored, and evaluated — knowledge that goes far beyond theory and has real implications for community impact and policy design.
My IVY journey continues to be an enriching experience full of learning opportunities and meaningful encounters, and I’m grateful for the chance to be part of a programme that truly makes cooperation tangible across borders.
– Stefano, IVY Reporter at the Managing Authority Italy Interreg Italy-France Maritime
