"If you could change just one thing in your city or in the cross-border region tomorrow, what would you change?"
That was how we opened our event "Beyond borders: youth ideas for tomorrow" on September 30th at the University of Debrecen. A simple question, with no wrong answers, and the start of a day that marked 15 years of Interreg Cooperation Day with a room full of young people. This year's slogan, “Stronger Together”, was meant to be more than words on a slide, so instead of talking about young people, we talked with them. Colleagues from the Managing Authority, the Hungarian National Authority, the Joint Secretariat and the Information Points were part of the conversation, from the first question to the final idea.
At first, the room was quiet. Then the polls began: who has crossed the border, who has friends on the other side, who would work there. Hands went up, smiles appeared, and we shared real stories from Interreg projects. TRANSBORDER introduced a direct bus line across the border, along with ecological buses. CHESS FOR CHANGE showed how chess can help children from disadvantaged backgrounds build self-confidence. UNITE looked at the unseen aggression many young people face. Some stories felt very close to the participants' own reality, and they began to speak about what makes it easier, or harder, to study, work and take part in activities across the border.
Then we asked them to build something. In groups, they worked on the topics that matter most to them: mobility, and everything from education to healthcare and the environment. Each group named a problem, explained why Hungary and Romania should tackle it together and turned it into a cross-border project idea. The room filled with voices, markers racing across flipchart paper and the kind of ideas that only come from real life, all powered by youth energy.
Then came the pitches. In front of a symbolic "Monitoring Committee", the groups defended their projects and answered tough questions about relevance, impact, innovation and feasibility, just as real proposals are assessed. After the vote, the winning idea received a symbolic decision for funding.
Invited to the event, two students from the University of Oradea brought the perspective of the other side of the border into the room. The young people had the chance to meet, talk, share ideas and contacts and, perhaps, lay the foundations for friendships that will reach across the border. Because, in the end, cooperation is about people who meet, talk and discover what they have in common and what they can build together.
Every participant left with a certificate of attendance, and the winning one with tickets to the Csokonai National Theatre in Debrecen, a cultural landmark renovated with support from our Programme.
We left with something just as valuable: honest views on the challenges and opportunities young people see, which will feed into our thinking about the future of the Programme.
Interreg Cooperation Day is about making cooperation visible and bringing it closer to people. In Debrecen, young people did exactly that.
Stronger together, indeed.
