Article by Délie Ronsin-Quéchon, Ufisc, France

During two days in April, the European Erasmus+ project ‘COOPTERR’ – Education in Territorial Cooperation Practices through Culture and SSE, hosted its first training activity, online. 25 to 30 participants from Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Romania and France were able to meet the 6 project partners (CRIES, Fekete Sereg, Largo Residencias, RIPESS Europe, Solidarius Italia and UFISC), and discuss on territorial cooperation practices and how to make them better.

The group agrees on the benefits of cooperation, convinced that to work as a collective, to mutualise resources, to analyse together a territory’s specificities and needs, to invite people from different sectors to work with us, makes us stronger. Territorial cooperation offers a significant lever for tomorrow’s society and challenges.

During this training, that will be completed with a third day online on the 18th of May, the participants discussed about each other’s cooperation practices, and about the experiences and points of view of several contributors. The collective also tackled the notion of culture, and cultural rights, which encourage us to recognise the other, and to respect their culture and identity.

After focusing on the values of cooperation, the participants will be invited to identify obstacles, levers, and conditions enabling good practices of territorial cooperation. If the sanitary conditions allow it, the participants will visit the partners’ countries for the next training sessions, as was initially planned.

Would you like to know more? You can follow COOPTERR on the project’s Facebook page! https://www.facebook.com/Coopterr-101564655163664