Hello everyone, I am Nikos Kalamatianos and I am an IVY Project Partner for the FourElements NGO. As an Interreg Project partner it is given to me the opportunity to be a part of the broader European “family” in which I am enabled to learn more about the European Cohesion policy and cultivate myself in its common values of solidarity and cooperation.
The project that I am volunteering is EduTourism which is part of “Interreg V-A Greece-Cyprus 2014-2020” program. The main goal of the EduTourism project is the creation of an educational tourism product which will expand the period of tourism in Greece and Cyprus and enhance the profile of the two countries through cooperation while achieving educational outcomes too. The developed product will target youths in the 16-25 age range and will connect historically, culturally and environmentally the two regions (Crete and Cyprus).
As part of this project, I have the opportunity to work with renowned colleagues who give me the right guidance and advices on how to implement a European funded program and teach me various steps and procedures of project management. In addition, through my work in the host organization not only I gain the necessary experience to be able to excel in a field that is of much interest to me but I also gain experience in EU and cross-border collaboration in the area of intervention (Greece – Cyprus).
In the context of the project, I actively participated on partner and internal meetings where I was able to meet wonderful people and discuss with the project’s aims and goals and also took part on the stakeholder mapping as the project still is on its initiating phase. Furthermore, I participated in the preparations of the specifications and guidelines for the current status study as an extra task and collaborated with project partners and IVYs within the consortium.
My expectations are high for the EduTourism project and I hope I will continue to contribute and meet the expectations of the host organization that I’m in.
Nikos Kalamatianos, IVY Project Partner at FourElements NGO for the EduTourism Interreg project
