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The Interreg Volunteer Youth (IVY) initiative celebrates its sixth anniversary!

April 2023

The Interreg Volunteer Youth (IVY) initiative celebrates its sixth anniversary!

Six years ago, the Association of European Border Regions (AEBR) started the Interreg Volunteer Youth (IVY) initiative.

The IVY offers young Europeans between the ages of 18 and 30 the opportunity to work as volunteers for 2 to 6 months on an Interreg project. It has been 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.

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.

Over 320 Interreg programmes and projects have taken part so far, hosting about 815 young people in 20 different countries. This resulted in hundreds of projects having received support from IVY volunteers, such as the POCTEFA programme, which has hosted many volunteers from the beginning of the initiative.

"IVY is a very valuable investment in current and future territorial cooperation: it helps make 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.

More info on Futurium
IVY web site

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