The last opening seminar of the programme

Even not all the projects have been contracted yet, the last opening seminar took place last week at Petrozavodsk where both the culture and social wellbeing projects met each other.

As a coordinator I was very pleased to see and hear that the projects were not only eager to cooperate with their partners but also with the other projects. It is quite clear already that the thematic approach was a good idea and will give added value for the projects.

The next thematic meetings will take place in late autumn: then we'll be able to tell more about the results of the forest and energy as well as of natural resources projects.


Henna-Mari Laurila
Programme Coordinator

"Eco efficient tourism" project moves to social networks

Joensuu hosted the coordination meeting of  "Eco efficient tourism" project partners that took place January 14, 2013. The partners has summarized the results of implemented activities like gathering of information and assessment of the current situation in the pilot areas, or study of the Finnish experience in management of recreational areas.  The implementation of upcoming activities such as publication of the guidebook on the tourist infrastructure along the “Blue Highway” and brochures on regional specificity information has also been discussed. But most of the time was devoted to the discussion of project Communication and visibility plan. Finnish partners have presented the project networking scheme.

First of all, The North Karelian Biosphere Reserve reported about launching the page of "Eco efficient tourism" project on their official web-site : it provides both basic information about the project and direct links to the official project site.

Secondly, the project has also got its Facebook page. This network can have a great long-term result in terms of creating a community of people interested in the project's topic, engaging stakeholders, attracting tourists and development of transboundary grass-root level actions.

Thirdly, "Eco efficient tourism" project will also be presented in FLICKR. This is an image hosting and video hosting website. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media. This resource is believed to give a good visibility of the project and contribute to tourism development on project pilot sites.

After all, Finnish partners made a commitment to update Communication and visibility plan in accordance with discussed changes and hold several of on-line (skype) conferences for the discussion of current issues in February and March.

Elena Cherniakevich

Project manager

Contracting, contracting, contracting.

The Joint Monitoring Committee selected the projects for Cultural cooperation, Social wellbeing and Sustainable exploitation of natural resources on November 13th and in December the European Commission approved the selection.

Since then the contracting of the last projects of the Karelia ENPI CBC programme has taken nearly all our time. Some of the projects have a signed grant contract already. More information on the launched projects can be found from our website.

The opening seminar for the natural resources projects will be organised on 13.-14.2. at Oulu and for the culture and wellbeing projects on 19.-20.2. at Petrozavodsk. Even we have already met most of the lead partners during the contract negotiations, we look forward meeting all the projects at the same time and seeing what kind of ideas and expectations the lead partners and partners have for cooperation.

Henna-Mari Laurila
Programme coordinator