Where to start? That was my first thought when I started to write this editorial, let’s make it personal is my idea. At the start, and that May 1999 perhaps surprisingly. That was the time when I was still active at the European Student Forum AEGEE. On a local meeting of the association in Rotterdam, I met a student from AEGEE-Timișoara, which is a green city in Romania. The interesting part for me was that she spoke Dutch, not the easiest language. I found it special, that my language was teached in Romania. Two weeks later when I went to Barcelona for the bi-annual meeting of AEGEE, I met her again together with some more Romanians, and the seed was planted. Due to the Balkan war, it took will 2001 that I went for the first time to Romania to Constanta and Timișoara. I had an amazing time, so well, that it became my favourite vacation destination.
Since 2009 my job is at the city of Rotterdam, after 5 years I work as European funding officer, so back in the European atmosphere like during my student time. In 2020 right after Covid, it was the first time that for work I went to Cluj-Napoca, Romania for the Eurocities working group Education. The way the mayor has worked to make Cluj the innovation capital of Romania is amazing, and I thought I really would like to collaborate with Cluj.
That opportunity arose in March 2021, when the topic of healthy school lunches was put on the investing capital list of the municipality. During Covid, it became obvious that many children didn’t have a healthy lunch or even eat a breakfast. Because of my focus on youth and education, I knew that there is the European Child Guarantee, which states that every child has the right to one healthy meal a day; so, I saw an opportunity to submit an Erasmus+ application around this theme.
Due to the inspiration, I got during my visit with the education working group, I contacted Oana Buzatu from the Education cluster Cluj to start a new project. Oana connected me with Andreea Suicu from the school inspectorate since she has experience with Erasmus+ projects. Together with Andreea we set up the partnership. Because I was able to travel to Cluj a lot privately, I could often meet with Andreea in person to create a great project proposal. We ended up with a partnership of eleven organizations from eight countries. The application was submitted online on March 25, 2023 in Prague, and this time it took a very long time (normally during the summertime you receive the result) until Monday, October 9th, that we received the big news that the project had been approved.
We decided to start on December 1st to have time get ready and in the cold of January 2024 we had the kick-off meeting in Cluj-Napoca and our three-year journey started.
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