Project WONDER – Child friendly destinations (n. 1090)
WONDER project’s main overall objective is to increase the attractiveness and competitiveness of destinations from the Adriatic-Ionian Region thanks to a child-friendly approach, aimed at improving the live ability of cities and the touristic offer (governance, environment and services) through the development of new and innovative participatory methods, coherently with programme Specific Objective
The expected results produced will be:
- New touristic offer addressed to children and families through innovative participatory methods
- Improved cooperation at local and transnational level among tourism sector, local authorities, civil society organizations and citizens/children
- Well-defined transnational identity and raising awareness developed on child-friendly tourism in the Adriatic-Ionian area.
The above mentioned results will be reached through 2 main outputs:
- WONDER destinations ACTION PLAN;
- The WONDER-Transnational Network of Child-Friendly Destinations, targeting different groups: from general public (including children), education institutions, civil society and NGOs, to public bodies and authorities, but also the private sector, including enterprises in the tourism sector.
The WONDER project will combine a top-down approach (decisions and strategies at local authority level) with a bottom-up approach (children’s, civil society, business sector, media involvement) to develop an innovative approach for child-friendly destinations. Though some of the partners involved are already committed in developing initiatives targeted to children, a complete & integrated policy targeted to children, both as residents and tourists is missing within partners’ territories involved. Cooperation among partners and the transnational approach will be therefore strategic in order to properly address the identified needs and finally establish a transnational network of “Child-friendly destinations” featured by a common brand.
WONDER project involves 6 municipalities:2 from Italy(Fano and Cervia), 1 from Slovenia(Velenje), 2 from Greece(West Achaia and Preveza) and 1 from Croatia(Novigrad), 1 Croatian Development Agency (Dubrovnik) and 1 Slovenian Development Centre(Novo Mesto); 1 Tourism Organization from Montenegro(Herceg Novi) and 1 NGO dealing with children issues (Observatory for Children and Youth rights-Albania). 3 Associated partners will contribute to the project: the Albanian Investment Development Agency, 1 civil society organisation dealing with healthy urban living (Split-Croatia) and 1 Chamber of Commerce (Achaia – Greece). The partnership was built on the basis of similar detected needs and potentialities identified through questionnaires distributed to PPs during project preparation. The distribution of PPs’ roles has been therefore based upon their experiences and competences, but also on the basis of the widest possible ADRION territorial coverage.