I was wondering if anyone participating in this forum knows whether or not any funding is available for the creation of new twinning initiatives within the EU. The material that I have seen concerning the 2007-13 programme refers only to twinnings that have already been established.

I work in a field that brings me into contact with many different Italian town councils and I would like to promote Twinning initiatives for them.

Many thanks

Hello Steve, and welcome to the forums.

Due to other commitments I was not able to reply to you before and am surprised that someone else has not made any sugestions yet, however, I do not think funding is available only to existing links, in fact, I tend to find that the longer a link has been established the harder it is to get public funding.

The principle seems to me, and I stand to be corrected on this, is that new and proposed links are more likely to get a helping hand than an existing link.

I suggest that you check out the following links for starters if you have not already found them.

The LGA basic info on twinning funding at http://international.lga.gov.uk/internatio...ning_grant.html
and
Info on finding the funding at http://international.lga.gov.uk/internatio...ip/funding.html

The LGA site also contains a wealth of information on twinning in general.

You can also check out the Europa website http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/education_culture/index_en.html
which give some indication on some of the activities which could atract European funding.

Hope this helps.

Alan

Hello again Steve, can I also point you in the direction of WelcomeEurope.com who sent me an email today, details of which are included elsewhere in these forum boards under "Finance & Grants" which can be found here

Alan

Many thanks for this information, Alan. I'll look into all these options carefully. I'd also like to bring your attention to a useful one-stop website with a lot of EU and non EU initiatives. I found some interesting things here which had not been well publicised elsewhere - www.eurodesk.org. Although it is mainly aimed at youth, there are many other issues covered.

Thank you Steve, this looks to be a useful site and I have therefore added it to our "useful links" section.