Friday was Chiara’s last day in Strasbourg. This is an opportunity to look back on what has been achieved in the past 6 months!

Chiara, who holds a Masters degree in Political Economy did an Erasmus+ internship at our Strasbourg office and supported the organisation of the Autumn plenaries in Izmir, the “E-health: let’s find a common language” event in Brussels and the Spring plenaries in London. Her work was instrumental in the development and implementation of the “Policy & Knowledge transfer” activities in the AER network.

“Considering the variety of the tasks, from the research to the most practical work, this experience has been particularly useful to understand what I really like. What I can say, in my last day here at AER, is that I feel I’ve grown up. I have learnt so much! The topics addressed, which are all relevant, have introduced me to many different fields, which I hadn’t explored before. I had the opportunity to practice and improve my communication skills. This was actually rather scary for me at the beginning. It was very interesting working in such an organisation and especially with an international, and I would say, fabulous team. Their work is great, they found the right way, I think, to get closer to regions and thus to the citizens’ needs, spreading knowledge and good practices. This experience enriched me both professionally, acquiring new skills and personally, for the working environment and for the knowledge developed. I felt inspired by the work of AER on regional development and I am actually thinking of doing my future steps in this field. Thank you AER team!”

We at the Secretariat are very grateful for the support we received from Chiara, as well as for the mutual learning and the fantastic human experience! We wish her a great career path and, of course, to keep in touch! Our paths for sure will cross again because this world, after all, is a rather small world!