After an initial greeting by the two Councillors involved in the project, Lia Montalti – Coucillor for Environmental Sustainability and European projects and Matteo Marchi – Councillor for Youth and Employment, team activities were introduced by Raffaele Barbato, representative for URBACT Secretariat.

During the day, partners faced and supported each other in the definition of an effective methodology for working together effectively not only on this second phase, but for the next 27 months of project’s life, discussing activities to be developed at local level, but also issues and organization of international workshops planned for the future - as occasion where the group will continue to meet and share results - optimal communication management of available tools and possible means of project activities and objectives’ dissemination, coordination and of project management, issues concerning each partner’s budget and financial reporting procedures.
In the afternoon, the workshop held by the Lead Expert Ian Goldring and the German partner, the University of Kaiserslautern, investigated local experiences in each member’s country about models of cooperation between actors involved at the local level with the project’s issue, reflecting on how to move in order to improve today’s local context and which advice direct to partners.
One of the main results of the workshop is that in most of the countries, even if there are different local actors operating in the territory and engaged on the same issue, and sharing the same objectives, there is no coordination among them, they are not aware of the others’ work, they don’t share information or tools, neither support. There is a need for greater cooperation between local actors in order to create an effective response to face youth unemployment.
The workshop ended with a “picture”, suggested by the German moderator, to summarize partners’ points of view about the current situation, described as a "building under construction, a the moment we have many bricks around and we are about to build foundations of a building whose roof is JOBTOWN.

Download Ian_Presentation.pdf (64.27 KB)

See the  meeting video! 

This is a short video put together by the Lead Expert, Ian Goldring, made up of brief outtakes from the JobTown partners' first Implementation Phase meeting and discussions – taking place in Cesena Italy, March 28th 2013.