Director’s Editorial – 36th issue

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WELCOME!
To the REGIONAL FUNDS ONLINE MAGAZINE

Dear Family,

It is with great pleasure that I am announcing you our renovated Mag. A unique and inspiring product, collecting together the successes of the Fund for Youth Employment and the Fund for Regional Cooperation. I wouldn’t say ‘new’, in terms of goals. We are still the same, a Family of Projects trying to reach the same common goals.

Why this change? First, because we love challenges! And this is, in some ways, a challenge. It is not always easy to think how to ameliorate something (our life, our work, our activities). And we know that this will imply having a longer Magazine. But I am saying it from the beginning: we are a Family. And this renovated Regional Funds Online Mag is perfectly reflecting the idea of this word I love so much, Family, indeed.

Step by step, we increased the quality of our online newspaper. We said goodbye to some Projects, we welcomed some ‘new entries’. Now, we have reached the point where we decided to join our forces. And this was possible for a specific reason. We have seen, these years, how our Project can easily cooperate among them, creating clusters, networks, exchanging ideas, successes and knowledge. That is why, to anticipate some changes, we decided not to start from ‘number 0’. To give you the idea of the existing continuity, it had sense, for us, to ‘sum’ together all the previous issues: now you know why this is the number 36!

Having merged the two Funds, you will receive one unique issue every month and a half, starting from this first one and… let’s see if we will have some Special Editions in between Jand who knows there won’t be any more surprises!

We have maintained our usual colors, our layouts, therefore you won’t be confused. We just created a new, general contact in case you want to reach us out. And last but not least, talking about little technicalities, you will see a new structure of our newsletter, giving you more inputs in terms of highlighted contents.

But this gives me the occasion to share with you an important reflection, which goes beyond technicalities. We are trying, thanks to the excellent results of our Projects, to give them more visibility. A due visibility, a desired and justified increase, in fact, by our excellences.

We still do not know which will be the future, but we know, for sure, that the interests towards our Projects has increased. And that is why, as I always precise, we always welcome external inputs. To start with a great one, the first hosts of our Regional Funds Mag are coming from the EU Neighbours East network, the Young European Ambassadors.

Does the European Year of Youth remind you something? JI think so. And we are glad we had the opportunity to welcome into our Mag Maria Pia Napoletano, the coordinator of the YEA, and one girl part of it, Anastasia Papapetrou. I am sure you will find interesting their words, leading us to reflect as well on this year main topics, skills.

Our Mag, let me say it, is an important skill. A skill that we thought, then grown, then improved. And we hope you will be able to feel, by reading us, the strong commitment existing behind these online pages. Our Donors, recently, felt it. And we are doing our best, together with our Projects, to make our activities and successes more known by Embassies and National Focal Points. We hope, in this sense, to expand further our big Family.

We talked a lot with our Projects representatives in these last months, I am sure that in the next months you will be reading interesting results, that we hope to disseminate further. Our next events will be an occasion, being as well the moment where we will be able to reflect on the importance and the meaning if this activity that we have been doing for a long time now: networking. I am talking about our future Annual Seminar, for instance, and let’s see if we will be able to organise a closing ceremony of this first phase of the Regional Funds Programme in 2024.

For sure, we invite all of you to be part of this process. Stealing some words to Tom, our Friend again present and always part of our Family, and therefore inviting you to read him, I like to think that we will be here ‘Ensuring Pathways’. And what I hope, talking as well on behalf of all my colleagues, is that our path will meet new inputs coming directly from you.

Our doors are open, more than ever, and our Regional Funds Online Magazine is ready to welcome you all.

Enjoy our Mag and, especially, stay tuned!

Gian Luca Bombarda
The Fund Operator

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