The Regional Fund Operator Communication Officers, represented by Mateusz Wiśniewski and Francesca Bombarda, have been invited to the communication workshop (the autumn edition) organised by the Financial Mechanism Office, held in Brussels, last 2nd and 3rd November.
It was the first time that the Fund Operators were invited to the workshop, organised every year for the National Focal Points and the Donor Embassies.
A lunch-to-lunch meeting full of inspiring practices shared by the different countries represented. New faces for the Fund Operator, but, in a certain way, shared challenges and, particularly, goals.
The result? A growing network. And for sure, full of communication, new efforts thought to better showcase the successes achieved.
And related to that, guess? Mateusz and Francesca were there to represent the two Regional Funds’ Magazines, the Youth Employment and the Regional Cooperation Online Magazines, which are still there thanks especially to the interest, dedication and – above all – projects’ work.
Different questions were asked: our Mags are made by the co-funded Projects directly, it is a space to showcase their activities and success stories, enriched by some external pieces contributing to our goals. Not a ‘classic’ newspaper neither a simple newsletter. But it is precisely for this reason that they have been presented as a successful, innovative experiment.
But the FO, in that workshop, was only one part – for sure important – of this big puzzle (that among us, as you all know, is called Family :)). It was focused on storytelling, thus retracing a bit our same line we presented to the Projects during end 2021. There have been different presentations coming not only by FMO representatives, but also from the NFPs themselves.
The shared spirit towards effective communication outputs lead the participants to recognise that we have many things in common, giving thus the opportunity to exchange ideas, problems, solutions.
In short, this has been a fruitful workshop full of stories. And this is the best term to conclude with. Stories. Stories coming from the National Focal Points, from internally the FMO sharing their campaigns’ results, and from our YE and RC Projects. Stories from the ground.
This is the direction where the future communication goals want to go. Collecting our successes, our best practices coming from the ground, showcasing them at the best we can.
In one word, or better in one hashtag: are you ready to share #OurStories?
Be ready and stay tuned, some news about that will come in the next months. For the moment, you can just think which is, for your Project, the best story to tell and the best way to do that. The important is to think about compelling stories in a human and emotional way, starting from the local level while highlighting our cooperation with the Donor States. Again, the important will be to… tell #OurStories !
Our Mags are for sure a great and excellent source to draw from.
Francesca Bombarda
Fund Operator
