Donegal Youth Service is set to deliver a unique project to encourage youth innovation and entrepreneurship in the Atlantic Area’s blue economy.
The Atlantic InnoBlue Communities (ATLIC) aims to bring together young people, academic institutions, SMEs, and public and private institutions, actively involving them in the development of the community.
Transnational cooperation is a key element of the project, which held its kick off meeting on December 6th and 7th, 2023, in Santo Tirso, Portugal.
Staff from Donegal Youth Service, including Regional Director Lorraine Thompson, attended the two day launch event in Santo Tirso which included several planning meetings with the other partner organisations and INTERREG, visits to local start-ups run by young local entrepreneurs, as well as a public launch event attended by young people from Portugal, and which included a public roundtable discussion that Donegal Youth Service staff took part in.
ATLIC Partner meeting, Santo Tirso, Portugal.
“The ATLIC project will be a great opportunity for young people in Donegal to explore the potential for growth in the blue economy sector through innovation and collaboration” said Frankie McGreevy, manager with Donegal Youth Service. “There is a wealth of untapped ideas in the young people of Donegal that with support and direction could develop entrepreneurship and social enterprise to make their communities sustainable for the future. We’re very excited to see what the project will bring forth as we deliver it in Donegal over the next three years and we look forward to working with INTERREG and our partners in Portugal, France and Spain in that time also.”
Speaking of the young people that Donegal Youth Service plan to recruit for the project with a local launch of ATLIC in the New Year, Mr McGreevy said, “The ATLIC project will be a great opportunity for our young people in Donegal to have a tangible input in tackling sustainability issues in the Atlantic Area and to also build international relationships with project participants and create a community of future change makers. We are really looking forward to starting the process of bringing young people onboard very soon and seeing them develop their ideas as the project unfolds.”
Key goals of the Atlantic Innovation Blue Community include fostering open innovation labs, knowledge-transfer, capacity building, and supporting networks to address common challenges faced in the region.
ATLIC has gathered an impressive lineup of partners, including Blue Lab (Saint Nazaire-France), L’École de Design Nantes Atlantique (France), Donegal Youth Service (Ireland), Institute for Methods Innovation (Ireland), Associaçao Comercial e Industrial do Funchal (Madeira-Portugal), Associaçao para o Centro Incubaçao Base Tecnológica do Minho (Portugal), Incubadora de Empresas de Base Tecnológica da Universidade dos Açores (Portugal), Município de Santo Tirso – lead partner – (Portugal), Cámara Oficial de Comercio, Industria, Servizos e Navigación de Santiago de Compostela (Spain) and Vida Lactea (Spain). These partners will bring their expertise and resources to contribute to the success of the project.
ATLIC is a project co-funded by the European Union within the framework of the Interreg Atlantic Area programme.
