Pskov Holds Evaluation Meeting for IC TACIS Project

Innovation Circle project (INTERREG) has passed and it was officially closed last year. However, the Russian part of the project called TACIS is having its last event today (21st May 2008). It could also be called the very last event within the whole Innovation Circle project. The purpose of the meeting is to present all the achievements of the project.

The event was opened by Nikolay Zateshilov and Elena Kolosova - representatives of fund “Pskov oblast for regional development”. The project manager Alf S. Johansen gave some very concrete facts about why a project like this is important. He mentioned that capitals and other big cities are attracting most of attention, investments and help. For this reason small cities and rural areas may be forgotte. Innovation Circle project managed to attrac attention to small places. After a lot of good ideas were elaborated and plans were made the project turned into a network. Now the network is going to work with further development of cities and villages and even improve activities with hard investments. Russian partners Pskov , Murmansk and the newcomer Severodvinsk are definitely a part of that work.

Mr. Bjørn Ring Opjordsmoen, an external expert from Norway, presented the final evaluation report for activities implemented in Pskov and Murmansk. Mr. Opjordsmoen interviewed the most active participants of the project and observed results that IC project ha created. The main question the expert was trying to answer was if the IC has made a change during 2,5 year.

In general the report was positive to the project, all the strengths and difficulties were mentioned..The final report for TACIS projects is planned to be printed in the beginning of June. Visitors of IC website will be offered an electronic version of it.