Six years ago, the Association of European Border Regions (AEBR) started the Interreg Volunteer Youth (IVY) initiative: with the first volunteer deployed at the Danube Transnational Programme, it set about a unique programme to promote cooperation thanks to the contribution of young people. Now AEBR celebrates IVY’s 6th anniversary and marks with pride how this unique initiative has grown to become an established and well recognised volunteering programme which has a lot to offer to young people and actors of regional cooperation.

The Interreg Volunteer Youth (IVY) initiative is promoted by DG REGIO with three objectives: support cooperation projects thanks to the involvement of motivated young people, make the benefits of cooperation more visible among local communities, and ultimately empower young people to engage in cooperation.

Over 320 Interreg programmes and projects have taken part so far, hosting about 815 young people in 20 different countries, from Belgium to Tunisia. This resulted in hundreds of projects having received support from IVY volunteers, hundreds of events being organised with or by young people to promote the benefits of European Territorial Cooperation in border regions, and thousands people following cooperation-related pages on social media.

Among other CBC-programmes, POCTEFA has hosted many volunteers from the very beginning of the initiative, with many of them having organised own events to inform citizens about Cohesion Policy’s results in the region and having written articles published by Interact and AEBR in the series “Stories of European Cooperation”. Thinking of their experience, Jean Louis Valls, director of the Working Community of the Pyrenees, the Managing Authority of POCTEFA, said: “Young people are undoubtedly more committed to Green Europe and certainly have more digital skills than people from previous generations. Thanks to initiatives like IVY we can learn from them in these areas every day”.

“If I think of you, I feel hopeful for a Europe which is based on solidarity and commitment to cooperation […]. You have made Europe’s regions closer to each other, and by doing so, Europe stronger”, said AEBR President Karl Heinz Lambertz addressing IVY volunteers and mentors.

“IVY is a very valuable investment in current and future territorial cooperation: it helps making it more visible and understandable, it promotes innovation, and it involves and trains potential ‘activists‘ among the younger generations”, states Martin Guillermo-Ramírez, AEBR’s Secretary General.

“IVY has created a community of young people with an interest and knowledge of Interreg” said recently Louise Floman, Programme manager at DG REGIO, remarking the positive impact of the initiative.

With the milestone of the sixth anniversary of the initiative, AEBR’s team wishes for the volunteers’ contribution to make the benefits of cooperation more visible to be better recognised, and for the IVY community of volunteers and mentors to continue growing.