Hello everyone,
My name is Laura, I am 25 years old and I come from France. It has already been some months since I started volunteering at the Joint Secretariat of Interreg VI-A NEXT Hungary-Slovakia-Romania-Ukraine (HUSKROUA) Programme, hosted by the Széchenyi Programme Office located in the beautiful Hungarian capital Budapest!
This programme aims at fostering cross-border cooperation for regional growth and sustainable partnerships. It is structured along 3 priorities to drive positive change across 10 regions of the 4 partner countries: a resilient and green border region, a healthy and attractive border region, a cooperating border region.
As an Interreg Volunteer Youth (IVY) Reporter, I am particularly sensitive to the ecological aspect. That’s why, during the first weeks of volunteering, with my co-volunteer Karolína, we organized a clean-up contest among our programme’s project partners for the Interreg Cooperation Day. We have been amazed by the enthusiasm shown by some of the project partners to promote environmental responsibility and make a positive impact!
We have been working on the consultation process on the Future of Interreg at the scale of our Programme area.
We helped our host organisation to digitalise the information contained in the paper questionnaires collected from the stakeholders. It was particularly interesting to read about their views regarding the benefits, opportunities and challenges of cross-border cooperation as well as their ideas and inputs to shape Interreg post-2027.
And above all, we supported the consultation among citizens. We put all our efforts into disseminating the online survey we have prepared and targeting the appropriate people and organisations. Our goal was to receive as many meaningful and relevant responses as possible to provide a pertinent and useful report to the European Commission by the end of the year. More concretely, we were planning to go to several universities to make European Cohesion Policy, territorial cooperation and more particularly the tangible results in our Programme area more accessible and visible among youth. Of course, we also provided them with information about the enriching opportunities offered by the IVY initiative!
I really enjoy volunteering for this Programme! Despite the challenges encountered by the project partners, such as the ongoing war in Ukraine, numerous and various projects have already been and will be implemented all across the Programme area. It is fascinating to leaf through the Programme’s book “Stories of Cooperation” and discover all the successfully implemented projects involving a wide range of stakeholders (hospitals, schools, city councils, chambers of commerce, national parks…) and from which citizens living in the 10 regions of the Programme can benefit in their daily life.
I am also particularly grateful for the warm welcome I received within my host organisation, not only from the colleagues of the Joint Secretariat but also from the ones working for other Interreg Programmes involving Hungary! I am happy to evolve in a caring environment and with international teams!
– Laura, IVY Reporter for the Joint Secretariat Interreg VI-A NEXT Hungary-Slovakia-Romania-Ukraine (HUSKROUA) Programme
