Interact in collaboration with the Association of European Border Regions (AEBR) has just published a new magazine of the “Stories of European Cooperation”, a series of articles written by Interreg volunteers to showcase Interreg’s impact on our daily lives.

Five participants in the European Commission’s initiative Interreg Volunteer Youth (IVY) wrote five articles to mark Interreg’s contribution to this year’s European theme: Skills.

Through their articles, IVY volunteers Thanos, Adriana, Sara, Silvia and Clara exhibit the achievements of cooperation, making the outcomes of each Interreg project visible and tangible. They report about projects from the cross-border area between Greece and the Republic of North Macedonia and Italy and Croatia, remote regions like the Caribbean Islands but also from transnational areas like Central Europe and the Mediterranean. Together, their stories show how European Territorial Cooperation supports employability in every region, with specific actions tailored to the local needs.

“This year is the European Year of Skills. That is why we focus on giving young people new skills through cooperation. Initiatives such as the Interreg Volunteer Youth (IVY) are essential for this purpose as they turn neighbours into friends across EU internal and external borders”, points out Slawomir Tokarski, Director for the European Territorial Cooperation, Macro-regions, Interreg and Programmes Implementation at DG REGIO in the introduction to the Stories.

In an interview to AEBR, Laura Belenguer, communications manager at Interact Valencia and curator of the magazine, stressed the great contribution of Interreg to help individuals acquire new skills, and the importance to make this contribution visible: “Interreg has been (and is!) working on that through thousands of projects all over Europe. Only during the last programming period, 1,600 Interreg projects have been carried out where, in one way or another, actions aimed at improving people's skills in the labour market. And so far, in the current period 2021-2027, a total of 27 projects have been or are being developed in this field. With these data, we see that Interreg does have an impact on the ground with this horizontal topic and we need to communicate these examples and put a name and surname to these thousands of beneficiaries”, said Laura.



Read the Stories of European Cooperation here.