THINK GLOBAL ACT LOCAL project, first live partnership meeting in Elblag, 28-29.09.2022

The past two days, September 28 and 29, were intensive meetings, talks, exchanging experiences and establishing international partnerships. Elblag hosted the first live meeting of all partners participating in the "THINK GLOBAL ACT LOCAL" project linking cities and municipalities from 5 European Union countries - Romania, Italy, Greece, Spain and Poland. We hosted a total of 19 people from abroad and 4 Polish representatives from the areas of the Association's Member Municipalities. Representatives of these countries met to jointly develop informational materials that will target their residents.

Before the workshop part began, our guests were welcomed by the Mayor of Elblag, Mr. Witold Wróblewski, who serves as Chairman of the Board in the Association. Mr. President shared with the participants very valuable information about the city, its history, economic potential and current investments. He encouraged cooperation with the city of Elbląg and the region.

The agenda of the meeting included a brief introduction of the participants. This was the first opportunity to get to know each other personally and present the needs of local governments, institutions, organizations and other entities, and in the future to jointly implement projects to solve various sensitive problems and undertake initiatives beneficial to local communities.

During these two days of meetings, our first task for all partners was to work on a survey that will allow us to collect very valuable information about: the degree of involvement of both the public and individual authorities in issues important to their city and region, the level of promotion of the public and its potential. The results gathered from the questionnaires will allow us to develop an idea for a long-term strategy for inter-municipal cooperation and citizen involvement. The Secretariat of the Association developed proposals for questions under 4 different topics, which were assigned to the groups:

1. The state of knowledge and involvement of citizens
2. The state of information and cooperation with local authorities
3. What is the promotional campaign of the Municipalities and the level of knowledge of residents about it
4. The sense of local identity - the state of social marketing

The task of the participants was the partner's discussion in thematic groups and create at least 30 questions for a survey - social research. The groups were international which facilitated the discussion and showed the degree of diversity or similarity in each country.