The second meeting “The Best Practices to Decrease Depopulation with Focus on Economy”of the project “Challenges of Regional Centres: Depopulation Control, Development – best practices” (DeCoDe) took place in Kaunas, Lithuania

This year on October 9-11 Kaunas City Municipality as a Partner of DeCoDe project hosted the meeting for partners and local people from eight countries: Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Romania, Italy, Denmark and Spain. This was the second meeting of the project. The project is implemented within the framework of the 2^nd strand “Democratic Engagement and Civic Participation” action 2.2 “Networks of Towns” of the European Union programme “Europe for Citizens”. The project aims to create an international, sustainable network of European cities to share their experiences on depopulation processes and their impacts, and to find solutions to reduce depopulation.

In Kaunas, the project participants get acquainted with depopulation situation with a focus on economy. Partners from Kaunas had prepared fulfilled program with discussions and experience exchange between local experts and project partners and study-visits in the city. Within the meeting the experience was shared by Kaunas City Administration, Kaunas Information Centre “Kaunas IN”, who showed statistics and situation about business situation in Kaunas, Migration Information Center “I Choose Lithuania” shared experience on how to operate one-stop-shop for Lithuania expats, Future Predictions for IT Curricular and New Ways of Learning by Kaunas University of Technology let us see the training opportunities in future, Kaunas City Municipality Kaunas City Social Services’ Centre shared their experience on social work with families, Karmelava Balys Buračas Gymnasyum informed about (Re)emigrant students in Lithuania, the information on Kaunas Local Labour Exchange was introduced by Lithuanian Public Employment Service Kaunas Customer Service Department and presentation about work and activities of Division of Social Services of Kaunas City Municipality was given by project partners from Kaunas.

There are several good experiences in Kaunas, from which other project partners can learn. There are several differences and some similarities between the situation of depopulation within the project DeCoDe partner cities and countries, so, there is a lot of work to be done in future – to share, exchange, choose the most corresponding, try to adapt and control depopulation in general.

Next project partner meeting is planned in Palermo, Italy in February, 2019.

The project is financed under the European Union programme “Europe for Citizens”. Implementation timeline: 01.03.2018.- 01.02.2020.

Information provided by the project coordinator J.Ūzuliņa

[email protected]