Interreg Europe hosts its first IVY Volunteer!

News

06 November 2017

By Joint secretariat

Meet Pauline, our IVY volunteer

Pauline is French and owns an MSc in geography and urban planning from University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Paris school of urban planning. After an Erasmus experience in Sweden and some time spent in London for her master's degree, she was looking for internship opportunities and read with interest about the IVY Initiative.

As an Interreg reporter, Pauline is part of the communication department in Interreg Europe: “I will bring my contribution to disseminating information on territorial cooperation projects. The main focus of my work in the secretariat will be to elaborate a communication plan on a specific topic: stories of the changing regions. The idea is to focus on different ongoing projects and to extract stories on good practices and, furthermore, put an emphasis on the results of territorial cooperation in Europe. This will be achieved by researching projects and running interviews with main stakeholders to try to evaluate the impact of territorial cooperation."

What is an Interreg Volunteer?

Interreg Volunteer Youth (IVY) is a programme which was launched last year by the European Commission as part of the European Solidarity Corps. It is monitored by AEBR (Associations of European Border Regions) and allows young students or freshly graduate ones to experience territorial cooperation from the inside by becoming Interreg Reporters or Interreg Project Partners.

According to Pauline, “an Interreg Volunteer benefits from a specific status: thanks to the link to AEBR, the volunteer has more freedom compared to an intern or apprentice to develop new creative modes of communication (in line with the volunteers’ specialties) and to disseminate information via his/her own social media, targeting new groups and stakeholders such as schools and universities."

IVY and the Interreg Europe projects

Four Interreg Europe projects joined this initiative and host(ed) a volunteer: REBUS, ZEROCO2, Social Seeds and ClusterFY.

Interreg secretariats or partners can apply to receive an Interreg Volunteer on the IVY website. They are then granted access to the European Solidarity Corps platform where young volunteers apply and can, therefore, select the profiles which suit the most their needs.

More details:

Photo credits: delfi de la Rua on Unsplash