“SI Baltic Sea Sessions – sharing results, shaping the region” by the Swedish Institute

The Swedish Institute, in cooperation with Euroregion Baltic Secretariat, the Union of the Baltic Cities Secretariat and Nordregio, invite you to a webinar exploring different collaborative governance models for enhancing stakeholder engagement in the Baltic Sea Region. The webinar aims to boost stakeholder involvement within emerging EUSBSR initiatives related to the green transition. The programme consists of two parts:

The first part will focus on:

• A policy perspective on stakeholder and citizen engagement in the EUSBSR.
• An overview of different EUSBSR governance concepts and practices.
• Practical learnings from ongoing projects, focusing on concrete stakeholder and citizen involvement tools, methods and practices from the Umbrella 2.0 capacity building programme examining how to engage local stakeholders and CSOs in frameworks such as the EUSBSR.
• Hands-on practices coming from regional city networks working on the green transition in the Baltic Sea region

REGISTER HERE: https://eusbsr2021.eu/

The aim of part one is to provide a good overview of both theoretical and practical examples for cross-sectorial and multi-level stakeholder engagement, including horizontal approaches, such as youth participation to boost green transition.

The second part of the webinar will open up the stage to the audience. Smaller group discussions will be arranged to discuss your possible role in future Baltic Sea Region collaborations. Interactive discussions based on participants own personal experiences will be carried out, focusing on: 1) identifying alternative stakeholder engagement best practice tools and methods; 2) establishing how to overcome the challenges of stakeholder mobilisation; 3) exploring the benefits of engagement and how to incentivise stakeholder to become more proactively involved. The key take-aways part of the discussion will be reported to the Annual Forum organisers.

For more information, please contact Gabor Schneider

Organiser – Swedish Insititute, Umbrella 2.0, Nordregio

Introduced in 2009, the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR) was the first EU macro-regional strategy of the European Union. Formally adopted by the European Council after a communique from the European Commission (EC), the EUSBSR is an agreement signed between the Member States and the EC to strengthen cooperation between the countries bordering the Baltic Sea and to meet the many joint challenges as well as benefit from common opportunities facing the Baltic Sea region through three objectives: Save the Sea, Connect the Region and Increase Prosperity.

The Umbrella 2.0 project has been developed precisely to make the EUSBSR more “user-friendly” for the local stakeholders. The Umbrella 2.0 project was initiated by the Euroregion Baltic (ERB) and is implemented throughout 2021 with two partners: Union of the Baltic Cities (UBC) and Baltic Sea States Subregional Cooperation (BSSSC). This project is funded by the Swedish Institute, which has supported Baltic Sea cooperation for many years, especially among the local actors. The project also builds on two previous capacity building projects successfully implemented by the Euroregion Baltic and its Partners within the Interreg South Baltic Programme.

Over the course of two months, the experts conducted a series of 14 interviews with Coordinators of all Policy Areas of the Strategy, attempting on the one hand to gain a broad picture of the current status of local stakeholders’ participation but also to listen to interesting ideas and proposals on what should be done further to integrate them in the works of the Strategy. To this end, we asked several questions through which we have received a great deal of interesting feedback and some concrete proposals for the future of the EUSBSR implementation.

The resulting report is directed both towards the local stakeholders who are newcomers to the Strategy as well as those local actors who are more experienced in Baltic cooperation but would like to organise their knowledge and understanding of how the Strategy can be of use for them. Lastly, we hope that this report will help all institutions directly or indirectly involved in implementing the EUSBSR to learn more about the importance of improved collaboration with the local level of governance to achieve the goals outlined in the Strategy.

Download the Umbrella 2.0 report here:

We invite you to join us on June 15th for an Umbrella 2.0 webinar on the EU Green Deal in relation to the Baltic Sea Cooperation.

It is dedicated to the so-called ‘newcomers’ –> small and local organisations willing to engage and increase knowledge on

• ​EU Agenda,
• Organisations active in the Baltic Sea Region
• Projects and their impact in ‘greening’ the BSR
• And much more!
•  

REGISTER & take part in this webinar. Be active in discussions with experts and Q&A session!

LINK: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_CUHZ0W3CTJuDK_dIwqD9Zg 

PROGRAMME

10.00: Intro & Welcome 10.05 – 10.20: Setting the scene

• Baltic Sea States Sub-regional Cooperation (BSSSC) by Marta Czarnecka-Gallas, BSSSC Secretary-General
• Umbrella 2.0 by Magda Leszczyna-Rzucidło, Project Coordinator, Umbrella 2.0

10.20 – 11.45: Green Deal- the Strategy that is changing the European Union
• Katarzyna Bałucka-Dębska, EU Commission
• Valdur Lahtvee, Council of Baltic Sea States
• Discussion with experts and Q&A session

11.45- 12.00: Coffe break

12.00 – 13.20: Active for Green Baltic Sea Region
• Miikka Toivonen, CASCADE, Southwest Finland Emergency Services
• Nico Stelljes, INNOVA, Ecologic, Germany
• Maria Micha, Diet for Green Planet, Sweden
• Discussion with experts and Q&A session 13.20 – 13.30: Round-up and Conclusions by Marta Czarnecka-Gallas, BSSSC Secretary-General

Umbrella 2.0 Partners – Euroregion Baltic, Union of the Baltic and the Baltic Sea States Subregional Cooperation are glad to present the draft agenda for the Awareness Raising Event promoting Baltic Sea cooperation scheduled for 27th April.

The main aim of our event is to inspire and raise awareness on the importance of cross-border and transnational cooperation for all local actors – including the smaller ones and those, who never took part in any international cooperation before. We wish to show you the great benefits of working together with similar actors all around the Baltic Sea but also guide you on how to start this kind of initiatives. We have prepared the event’s agenda that will inform you how our 3 organisations – ERB, UBC, BSSSC could support you in your journey, what are the possibilities and “entry points” available.

We have invited experts coming from: Council of the Baltic Sea States, EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, local NGOs and municipalities from different Baltic Sea countries to ask them for their best practices, advice and inspiration. We also plan a Q&A session with our experts, where you will be able to learn more about the cooperation possibilities and find necessary information for your future collaboration.

Please see the draft agenda for the event below. We hope you will find it interesting and will join us in our journey that starts n 27th April and will continue in the next months’ thanks to the support we received from the Swedish Institute. We plan to follow up this meeting by organising smaller events (hopefully they will be also possible in physical format!) related to specific cooperation topics and EU/BSR policies and agendas.

You can register for the event here:
http://bit.ly/Umbrella2Event

And download the agenda here:

On 13th January 2021 Umbrella 2.0 project partners: Euroregion Baltic, Unione of the Baltic Cities and Baltic Sea States Subregional Cooperation met together with the Swedish Institute representative to officially start the activities in the new project. Read below to get to know our project better and familiarise with the activities we plan to offer to our beneficiaries in the Baltic Sea Region.

UMBRELLA 2.0 – why we applied to SI for the support?

2021 will be a gap year for cross-border cooperation. The South Baltic Programme, a primary financial tool utilised by Euroregion Baltic to reach its scope, will launch the new programming period 2021-2027 only at the end of 2021. Only small project funds will be available. Hence, Euroregion Baltic realised that the Umbrella project’s success and capacity building process initiated in 2018 could not be stopped. For this reason, the so-called Umbrella 2.0 proposal was presented to the Swedish Institute as the natural consequence of Umbrella Project (SBP) and its willingness to become a recognised brand, active also on a broader Baltic Sea scale.

Therefore, Euroregion Baltic, together with UBC and BSSSC, submitted Umbrella 2.0- Boosting transnational cooperation capacities for multilevel actors in the Baltic Sea Region- that has been approved by the Swedish Institute in Nov 2020 and launched in January 2021.

AIM OF THE PROJECT

The project’s overarching goal is to increase awareness and knowledge of transnational cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region. More specifically, the project aims at initiating a process for the development of strong multi-actor and multilevel governance partnerships that can undertake cross-sectoral sustainable solutions while following the principles and objectives of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, EU Green Deal and UN SDG.

The aims concerning the Baltic Region are :

– To raise awareness of opportunities and benefits of transnational and cross-border cooperation and increase regional stakeholders’ interest in it;

– To empower stakeholders to build strategic and long term-partnerships, support networking, and straighten community of practitioners in different sectors;

– To improve knowledge of the EU, its financial instruments and relevant strategies, with particular focus on the EUSBSR;

– To explore the opportunities and benefits of being part of EUSBSR and offer practical guidelines on how to engage in long-term;

– To help build competencies, i.e. knowledge and skills necessary to run projects with benefit to the Policy areas, and create specific networks of interest in different sectors in a cross-sectorial manner focusing on a shift and transformation by our beneficiaries (activating them for sustainable transnational cooperation).

Umbrella 2.0 builds on Umbrella project results. The Umbrella project was launched at the beginning of 2018. It resulted from the realisation that the South Baltic Programme (SBP) was hard to access for small organisations, mainly because of their insufficient institutional and financial capacities. SBP stakeholders in general and small local actors specifically still experience communication barriers, limited English language skills, and lack of competences and capabilities in project development and implementation. To address these challenges, the Umbrella project committed to developing know-how capacities for small local and regional actors and civil society organisations in the South Baltic Programme area to improve their cross-border cooperation participation. To achieve this goal, Umbrella implemented a significantly more comprehensive approach, determined by a strategic decision of the partnership to address different levels of capacity building processes – from a single institutional capacity of potential project partner, via micro-activities addressed to the micro organisations till strategic capacity building on the programme macro-level where we cooperated with EUSBSR HA Capacity coordinators (our Associated Partner).

Umbrella proved to be an optimal mediator among different stakeholders. Therefore, starting from the presumption that the EUSBSR and the local actors are completely detached one from the other, Umbrella 2.0 objective would be to develop know-how capacities for local organisations in cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region, harmonising local needs and actions and upper strategic lines.

While the local actors are focused on objectives in their local sphere of influence, the strategy provides guidelines that are not known at the local level. A bridge between local actors and the strategy needs to be set to enhance the interaction among all the governance levels to start a process that can facilitate the implementation of EUSBSR and other sustainable policies matching with EU Green Deal and SDGs. Umbrella 2.0 would act to mediate the communication between the strategies and the local level, raising awareness and providing practical knowledge and tools for implementation.

Would your organisation like to start or expand collaborations that contribute to sustainable economic, environmental or social development in the Baltic Sea region? The Swedish Institute provides funding for joint projects in which Swedish organisations meet transnational challenges together with organisations from the Baltic Sea region countries including Russia and the countries of the Eastern Partnership.

Overview

What is Seed funding in the Baltic Sea region?

The Swedish Institute seeks to strengthen Sweden’s relations and develop cooperation with the countries around the Baltic Sea and in our immediate area. Swedish organisations can apply for funding from the Swedish Institute in order to cooperate with organisations in the Baltic Sea region countries including Russia and organisations in the EU’s Eastern Partnership countries. The project activities that the Swedish Institute supports via ‘seed funding’ must be clearly linked to one or more of the challenges identified in the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea region. Projects including countries in the EU Eastern Partnership must also relate to this framework. Furthermore, projects should help create conditions for long-term, sustainable relations in the region.

• A project can run for no longer than 18 months.
• A project can apply for SEK 100,000 to SEK 500,000.

Who can apply?

• The main applicant has to be based in Sweden.
• The application must include at least three actors in three different countries eligible for support, one of which is Sweden (as main applicant).
• Countries eligible for funding are  Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Russian Federation, Sweden and Ukraine.

Project database

Have a look at our project database to get an idea of the kinds of project we support. The database is under construction and more project descriptions will be added.

Questions?

If you have questions relating to our seed funding for Baltic Sea region cooperation, please find our contact details at the bottom of the page.

The next call for Seed funding for cooperation projects in the Baltic Sea region opens 19 November 2020. Read all the info about the call here: https://si.se/en/apply/funding-grants/pi/

The meeting in Kaliningrad Russia on 24-25 November 2016 was the next important stage of work on the project CaSYPoT-Ru – Capacity Building for Strategic Youth Policy and Transnational Cooperation. At the meeting discussions on important issues were held and significant solutions concerning the project were developed. (more…)

The Swedish Institute (SI) once invites Swedish organisations and their international partners to submit applications for seed funding under the framework for collaboration in the Baltic Sea region. (more…)