The project addresses low participation of local actors in the South Baltic Programme and their need for capacity building. By bringing together new-comer local authorities, in cooperation with universities, the project aims at showing the benefits of soft cross-border cooperation in regard of solving common problems in the field of youth issues. Cooperation will be facilitated by umbrella organization Euroregion Baltic and cooperation of regional authorities within it. Main aim of the project is to increase cross-border cooperation resulting in building capacity of local actors working with youth in the ERB. The partner municipalities will jointly carry out a survey among teenagers to identify their needs and problems, providing comparable data. It is a form of sharing good practice, as the survey has been formerly developed and implemented in Swedish municipalities, now it will just be adjusted to the other countries’ local contexts. The obtained results will be analysed by universities and compared between the countries. Also additional tools to get knowledge about the situation for youngsters in the participating municipalities and regions will be created and tested. Further it will lead to creating joint knowledge-based youth strategy in ERB as well as local youth strategies. It will allow to address several youth problems in the region, e.g. early school leaving. Such cooperation requires local actors responsible for youth issues to cooperate with each other as well as with the universities engaged in social studies. In regard to prepare a good quality survey close cooperation between the universities is necessary, which will lead to forming a network. Main result will be local actors, including new-comers, being involved in the South Baltic Programme and learning about the benefits of soft cross-border cooperation. Thanks to the cooperation in this project the participating institutions’ ability to join cross-border projects in the future will increase.
