Jobtown Kick-Off Meeting

Held in Cesena, June 7th

Jobtown Kick off Meeting was held on June 7th in Cesena, Italy.
The first meeting among partners of the URBACT project established partners networking and peer exchange, clarified project goals, methodology, next steps and built political commitment.

In the morning, after the welcome by Paolo Lucchi, Mayor of Cesena and by Councillors Lia Montalti and Matteo Marchi, Raffaele Barbato from URBACT Secretariat illustrated URBACT II programme, while Ian Goldring, our Lead Expert, talked about Jobtown EU policy context, rationale and objectives. Later on, each representative of project partners presented his own town situation in relation to Jobtown goals.
In the afternoon, the meeting went on with two simultaneous working sessions: one coordination meeting and one political meeting.

The coordination meeting foreseen contributions by Jobtown Coordination team, Local coordinators, Lead Expert and URBACT Secretariat representative, Celine Ethuin. They illustrated Coordination, Financial and communication guidelines, Lead Expert’s Study Visits and Baseline Study. Then, partners shared a plan of action and calendar for the development phase.

During the political meeting, political representatives from Cesena, Thurrock, Latsia and Gondomar municipalities, together with URBACT Secretariat representative Raffaele Barbato, discussed about building political commitment for JOBTOWN network, identification of strategies for developing local partnerships in order to enhance youth employment and opportunity, and the identification of politicians’ interests and needs in terms of transnational exchange and learning.