First European Travel Experience Young holiday heroes trotting around Europe!
Projektbeskrivning
BRUSSELS – The European Commission’s Calypso Preparatory Action opens up travel for underprivileged groups and -at the same time-boosts local economies and employment opportunities. At the end of 2011 the Commission selected the First European Travel Experience (FETE)-project to which a grant of €135.000 was accorded.
This project is a cooperation between 4 European regions: Flanders (Belgium), Jämtland Härjedalen (Sweden), Kainuu (Finland) and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany).FETE will be implemented in the course of this year with pilot holidays planned in August and September 2012.
With Tourism Flanders as its prime mover, FETE promotes first holiday experiences for young people in Finland, Germany, Sweden and Belgium. For the first time international partners join forces to work together in order to develop methodologies and good practices.
For a pilot exchange project in which different groups of young people, inexperienced in traveling abroad due to financial or other constraints, get the opportunity to go on holiday in one of the partner regions.
Every country will host a holiday stay with participants from all partner regions, thus allowing a total of approximately 64 youngsters aged between 16 and 26 to participate. The holidays will be organized during the low and shoulder season supporting the reduced touristic supply in each region’s calm periods.
One of the main goals of the FETE project is to stimulate the cooperation between the public and the private sector in different European regions. Next to that, it is envisaged that, in the future, the developed partnerships, methodologies and best practices could be transferred to other European regions and countries.
All participating regions are members of ISTO which facilitated the initial collaboration and will collaborate actively in the future development of the project. It is exactly because of the multi-faceted aims of the FETE project (international cooperation and youth tourism as well as stimulating the economy) that this proposal was chosen by the European Commission and granted financing.
Traveling internationally means reinforcing intercultural learning, transnational social interaction and European citizenship. With this project all partner regions contribute in realizing the right to holiday on a European level. Because everyone deserves a break!
Regional projekledare för Jämtland Härjedalen: Ingrid Hedlund