For these reasons they created a project, approved by the “Agenzia nazionale dei giovani” and co-financed by the European Union entitled:

“Open Culture Volunteering: Strengthening European Youth Participation from Matera” that took place from August 22 to 30 in Matera.

The main objectives of the project were:                                                     

Fostering cross-cultural understanding;                            

Empowering youth as agents of change;

Promotion of volunteering and youth  organisations by socialising and soft skills development and understanding collective context and history.

Partners of the project were: La Víbria intercultural-Spain; Timisoara 2023 ECoC-Romania; Eudaimonia association-Bulgaria; Ministry of Gozo-Malta.

30 Young Europeans have had the opportunity, working in teams, to discover many things about the city of Matera and its history but above all about the cities from which they themselves come, imagining a way of being active citizens in their own city.

All the activities were as interactive as possible, to let the youngsters have the chance to express themselves in their own way.

During the seven days of the project they were also able to hear about the experience of Matera 2019, European Capital of Culture, from the start to the end of the year 2019, and they met the major of the city, Domenico Bennardi and the cultural councilor of Matera’s municipality, Tiziana d’Oppido. The presence of the municipality and the Matera-Basilicata foundation as stakeholders has been an added value to the project itself and showed to the partner organisations how important volunteers are for the city.

“Being able to see young guys, make new friends, work together to improve their territory, their city, their lives, is something absolutely unique and special that needs to be shared and celebrated and appreciated” were the words of Roberta Ruggieri, manager of the project, “this is something we will repeat for sure, it’s too important for us and for our volunteers”.

"Observing how young people understand the importance of the impact of a European Capital of Culture on the community becomes an important element for the promotion of volunteering and the understanding of its European dimension" commented Ferdinando Trotta President of Open Culture Volunteers 2019. "This becomes even more important in light of Matera's candidacy as European Capital of Volunteering for 2029 and strengthens our commitment in this direction”.