Four IVY volunteers and the IVY team were at the EYE2023, the main European Parliament’s event targeting young people, this weekend. The event brought to Strasbourg thousands of young people who exchanged ideas and got together to talk about and influence Europe’s future.
Ancor Armas Martin, Julie Gondouin, Silvia Guastella and Julia Salabaraas shared their experiences as IVY volunteers so to inform about cooperation policy and opportunities to get involved in it through their stories.
Here they tell us how they felt in and around the European Parliament:
How is your experience being here at the EYE?
What do you take away from this event?
I am very happy to have taken part in this major event. I think that it's a very important experience for young people because we have the opportunity to exchange with other young people from all over Europe. For me personally it was also very interesting because I had the chance to meet other IVY volunteers. Also, a lot of people were very interested in what we do and for us it was very important to give them an insight of IVY and Interreg.
The main take away is the great reception we've had. We've managed to organise four informational sessions and it's been well received, the audience has been quite large and showed great interest. A lot of people stayed even after the session to ask for further information on how to participate and contribute to cross-border cooperation. Another take away is the experience itself: meeting with the other volunteers has been very enriching for us and for the team.
How were people reacting to the workshop? Are they showing interest for regional cooperation?
This was the first time for us to be here at the EYE. Do you think we should do it again?
Yes! We had a lot of questions, people were really interested in the IVY programme. Some of them wanted to get involved so we had questions like on our projects: what do we do concretely and how does it work to volunteer. But we have also received questions about Interreg funds: how they work and how it’s possible to participate in Interreg with youth associations. So yes, people were really interested.
Yes! There was a lot of turnout, so we could see that there is an interest that it's growing and a lot of people actually were already aware of IVY, so it would be a very good opportunity to continue spreading the word and meeting new young people interested in European cooperation and IVY in particular.
Happy to have had this very successful experience and most of all to had the occasion to meet with four amazing IVY volunteers, we now feel inspired and encouraged to keep involving young people in cooperation, having no doubt of how important it is for a stronger and more connected European Union.
