Danube Region Programme

Blaž works in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he is involved in projects related to spatial development and territorial cooperation.
⛷️Outside of work, he enjoys an active lifestyle, especially running, mountaineering, spending time in the mountains, and being in nature in general. 🙌 https://interreg-danube.eu/blogs/people-opf-the-danube-insights-and-voices-from-across-the-region

People of the Danube 🌊
Behind every Interreg project there are people — coordinators, project partners, officials, researchers, community organisers - who spend years navigating complex partnerships, shaping policies that make a real difference, and building something that outlasts the project itself. 🤝
Through this series, we talk to the people of the Danube region about what they learned, how they grew, and why working across borders matters.

🤝 The Interreg Danube Region Programme encourages its projects to cooperate, build on each other's results, and capitalise on the work done across the two previous programming periods. 🌍 Knowledge and professional networks travel further when projects work together and that benefits the entire region.

For Monica, whose project Skills4Life (https://interreg-danube.eu/projects/skills4life) supports young people leaving the special child protection system in the Danube region - young people facing barriers to education 📚, employment 💼, housing 🏠, and social inclusion 🤲 - synergies and capitalisation are not just programme requirements. They are a way to multiply impact where it matters most. 💡

"Synergy - building and capitalisation activities strengthen cooperation across the Danube Region and at EU level, contributing to a better understanding of social economy challenges and the needs of vulnerable groups, especially vulnerable youth. They help us exchange good practices 🔄, transfer innovative solutions ✨, and improve the quality of policy recommendations and strategic planning. These activities also support better alignment between local, regional, and European priorities 🎯, while expanding the range of services offered to target groups, increasing project impact, and ensuring more sustainable long-term results."

Monica Magureanu, Skills4Life project

💡 Here's something we don't say often enough: the synergies you're seeing didn't just happen. They were planned for.

From the very beginning - when projects were still at the application stage - DRP MA/JS built in the expectation that results should travel. That projects should connect. That what gets created in one funding cycle should feed into the next, not disappear at the end of the Programme

That's not a small thing. A lot of programmes talk about capitalisation. Fewer actually structure their support around it, from day one, all the way through implementation and beyond. 🔄

We wanted to understand what this feels like from the inside. So we asked Lead Partners and experts who have been part of this process to share their perspective - why it matters to them, and what it makes possible that wouldn't otherwise be. 🎙️

We'll be sharing more of these voices. Because behind every synergy, there are people who chose to show up, open up, and build something bigger than what they started with. 🤝