Diary of an internship with the MY GENERATION project
The EU PHARE programme created a Young Professionals Scheme to attract and prepare young people for the Romanian public administration. Following a one year Master in Rotterdam, four Romanian students did a one month internship with the City of Rotterdam, lead partner of the MY GENERATION project about the positive potential of young people for the development of cities.
URBACT enables cities to work together to develop solutions to major urban challenges, but it does not finance the implementation of these solutions. Therefore, URBACT recommends cities to find financing opportunities within EU structural funds by creating bonds with Managing Authorities for ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) and ESF (European Social Fund). During their internship, the Romanian students tried to find the funding opportunities within the specific ERDF and ESF programmes for the cities of Rotterdam (The Netherlands) and the Tirgu-Mures (Romania). The outcomes of their work, also analysing the differences between ERDF and ESF in The Netherlands and Romania, are summarised here.
Razvan Bucurean: “The idea of creating a strong bond between municipalities and the youth and to create a cultural identity for young people as members of their community was rather new for us. Coming from a country that still faces serious economic drawbacks, the scarcity of opportunities for the young is quite severe. Perhaps it was because of our backgrounds that we found the experience so intriguing”.
Cleo Pouw
