The aim of the project was to develop youth cooperation in the cross-border area between Romania and Hungary, through joint activities of the young people in the region, which were meant to stimulate their interest for active engagement both in aggregating their own interests, as well as for active involvement in community life in general.

The project idea started from the needs of the young people in the region, needs identified by the partner organisations – the Intercultural Institute of Timisoara and the Southern Great Plains Region Social Research Association (Dél-Alföldi Regionális Társadalomtudományi Kutatási Egyesület – DARTKE) from Szeged: on the one hand lack of extracurricular occupational alternatives, on the other hand lack of trust in their own capacity of influencing the decision making processes.

The direct participants in the project were 14 specialists on youth issues from the two countries and a group of 32 young people from the cross-border area, selected both from urban and rural areas (from Timis and Csongrad counties).

The project team organised two round tables involving the youth specialists as speakers, a study camp and an intercultural management seminar. Two bilingual brochures were published (in Romanian and Hungarian) and a bilingual website was set-up. A documentary of the project was filmed and a radio broadcast was realised focusing on the project, in order to inspire others to plan projects for and with young people in the future. The activities were elaborated based on a dynamic and interactive methodology, designed to correspond to the age of the target group and to contribute to raising awareness on the importance of intercultural communication and other European values.

This project was implemented between October 10th 2008 and October 9th 2009 and co-financed by the European Union through PHARE Cross-Border Cooperation Programme Romania-Hungary 2006.

A short video of the project is available here: