Hello everyone! My name is Daniele Sabato and I want to share with you all my experience as an IVY Volunteer who is supporting the Adriatic Ionian Euroregion (AIE) in Campobasso (Italy) in the implementation of the Community4Tourism project.
The project has been financed by the 2021-2027 Interreg Euro-MED funding programme and it will last from January 2023 until September 2029 (!)
The Euro-MED programme covers 69 regions of 14 countries from the Northern shore of the Mediterranean and focuses on 4 main missions: 1) strengthening an innovative sustainable economy; 2) protecting, restoring, and valorising the natural environment and heritage; 3) promoting green living areas; 4) enhancing sustainable tourism.
The programme supports two kinds of projects, transversal Governance Projects and Thematic Projects addressing specific priorities. For each mission, there are two governance projects: a Thematic Community project and an Institutional Dialogue project.
COMMUNITY4TOURISM
Community4Tourism is the Thematic Community governance project that has been selected for the Mission 4, “Sustainable Tourism,” and as such its main goal is to facilitate exchanges and synergies among the corresponding Thematic Projects and enhance the value, outreach, and transferability of their results to other territories or stakeholders.
The Adriatic Ionian Euroregion (AIE) is a network constituted as an association of 33 members (Regional and Local governments from Italy, Greece, Croatia, BiH, Montenegro, and Albania) for the promotion of transnational cooperation between regions and local authorities.
In particular, AIE leads the Community4Tourism’s second Work Package, “Transferring,” creating the conditions for transferring and mainstreaming best practices and tools to other beneficiaries in the Adriatic Ionian (EUSAIR) Area. It will also act as the contact partner for the Result Amplification Strategy and be involved in the third Work Package, “Coordination,” for the activities to be performed in the EUSAIR area.
In November 2023, Community4Tourism welcomed the first round of thematic projects (TPs) that will operate as part of the Sustainable Tourism Mission. C4T is currently organising the first Kick-off Meeting (KOM) of the Community of Projects of Sustainable Tourism Mission, which will meet in Rome on the 10th and 11th of April 2024.
The event will be the occasion to welcome new projects to the Community, start building connections, and finding synergies, share Community4Tourism’s plans and strategies to support the projects’ activities, the transferring and capitalisation of their results; and organise the 1st Annual Meeting of the Mediterranean Clusters, one of the project’s central proposals to fulfil its main objectives.
As an IVY Volunteer, I have been helping the AIE team in the daily management of the project and in its role as the thematic coordinator for the MED cluster “Innovation,” one of the key actions of the work package “Transferring.” Therefore, I have been gathering information from the various relevant TPs and contributing to the organisation of the KOM.
The experience so far has been very engaging and interesting and I look forward to continue supporting AIE and C4T for the rest of my stay!
– Daniele S., IVY Project Partner for the Interreg Euro-MED project “Community4Tourism” at the Adriatic Ionian Euroregion
