Reflection, alignment and building the shared roadmap ahead

Our third and final day in Vienna brought the entire COOPOWER team together to consolidate the intense co-creation work of the previous days and translate it into a clear, shared direction for the months ahead.

We began Day 3 with a Feedback Carousel, where each pilot team presented its draft pilot concept and received peer feedback on strengths, risks, blind spots, and opportunities. This process helped us refine our approaches and compare how different countries plan to “reach, involve and engage” young people.

By the end of the session, we agreed on a common understanding of engagement levels:

• Informed: young people or stakeholders who receive information;

• Reached: those who participate at least once;

• Involved: those taking part in several activities;

• Engaged: those completing all planned activities of the pilot.

This shared definition is crucial both for internal clarity and for reporting to Interreg.

Each country also shared its preliminary target numbers based on local realities, for example, Slovakia building on an existing hackathon and school-based workshops; Romania integrating structured mentoring cycles; Serbia combining outreach through employment services with tailored training; Bulgaria planning a multi-step engagement pathway through school visits, career days, hackathons and competitions; Ukraine structuring its pilot into four learning modules; Hungary designing a fully co-created pathway based on surveys and workshops in the Tokaj region.

Afterwards, the Steering Committee reviewed project progress and the road ahead: nine key deliverables due in March, the set-up of the Policy Advisory Group (PAG), and closer collaboration with sister projects such as Skills4Life, SteelCityZen and WIN. We also discussed evaluation beyond the pilots, from policy take-up to cooperation and communication impact.

We closed Day 3 with a shared sense of alignment and momentum across the COOPOWER partnership. The reflections, peer feedback and joint discussions helped ensure that diverse local pilots are embedded in a coherent, shared framework, grounded in common definitions, expectations and timelines. By the end of the Vienna meeting, we had a clear roadmap ahead, strengthened cooperation within the consortium, and a collective commitment to turn careful planning into concrete action and meaningful impact for young people across the Danube Region.