Networks and cities' news

Vilawatt UTM Learning Webinars - How to convince citizens and companies in the city to be more efficient in their energy use

In the last Vilawatt UTM webinar, the partner cities had the opportunity to discuss another of the fundamental issues for the transfer process of the Vilawatt Innovative Practice in depth: How to convince citizens and companies in the city to be more efficient in their energy use. 

CO4CITIES - 2nd Transnational Meeting, Gdańsk, September 16-17, 2021

The 2nd Transnational Meeting took place in Gdańsk with a mixed-mode: some sessions were carried out “in presence”, with the participation of representatives of Budapest, Cluj-Napoca, and Turin, and others online.

Transnational meeting in Voru - Going hybrid for the first time in SIBdev Network’s history

Between 14 and 16 September 2021 a long-awaited event for the SIBdev Network took place in Voru, Estonia and in the online space at the same time: the first hybrid transnational event in the partnership’s history. The meeting was the 5th since the launch of the 2^nd phase of the project, following a series of online sessions that started with the Activation meeting on 8-10 September 2020.

Focus on Timisoara (RO) - How knowledge can contribute to fighting homelessness

Timisoara decided to join the ROOF network because, like in many other European cities, homelessness is more and more present and we wanted to learn new ways towards ending it. Housing First approach to end homelessness is seen as the most effective especially when working with people with complex social needs. During the transnational meetings we could see good examples of how this approach is used in more than half of the cities from the ROOF network to successfully improve the life of people and take them out of homelessness. Still Romania and Timisoara were not familiar with the Housing First approach and most of the URBACT Local Group members never heard of it. So, we decided that in order to draw an accurate and achievable Integrated Action Plan we need to use the Small-Scale Actions to gain more knowledge on Housing First approach.

SIBdev at the 19th European Week of Regions

As a side event of the 19th European Week of Regions and Cities, SIBdev Network has organized an online info session on 12th October 2021, coordinated by its partner city Baia Mare. The aim of the event was to share knowledge on EU level about the concept of social investment bonds (SIBs) and to showcase two best practices from partner cities in two different areas of social policy: the SIB model for education and employment in Fundão, Portugal and the SIB for mitigating youth homelessness in Aarhus, Denmark.

Hybrid working – Manchester approach for the co-creation of its’ draft IAP

The focus of Zero Carbon Cities (ZCC) is to help cities transition to carbon neutrality in line with science-based targets required in order to align with the Paris Agreement. Manchester is the Lead Partner for the network along with Bistrita, Modena, Tartu, Vilvoorde and Zadar.

To support this aim, each network city will produce an Integrated Action Plan (IAP) setting out how it will implement actions to support the ambition. The plan is an output of the city’s local stakeholder group (ULG – Urbact Local Group) and should be a co-creation of the city and the ULG.

Working collaboratively has been a challenge for city partners due to covid restrictions.  The Manchester team held a planning session to look at how it might engage its stakeholders in the production of the IAP.  It considered what stakeholders should be targeted (key and others) and what method of engagement would be most effective and provide most value.  As covid rules started to relax in the UK, Manchester resolved to organise a workshop to develop the city’s draft Integrated Action Plan.  It was clear that not all stakeholders would be able to meet physically so the project team determined that a hybrid workshop be created involving both physical and virtual participants.