They are a yet another beneficiary group among the 29 “Local Development” Programme winners about to receive EEA and Norway Grants assistance.

The “Local Development” Programme is based on the concept of comprehensive assistance issued to small and medium-sized cities and towns, targeting changes to environmental quality, support for entrepreneurship, enhanced public administration effectiveness, and bettered living standards for residents of small and medium-sized cities and towns.

Owing to “Local Development”
Programme assistance, local governments of the Podkarpacie voivodship (Jarosław, Jasło, Krosno, Nisko) will be able to implement development-boosting investments. All endeavours will contribute to comprehensive environmental, socio-economic and institutional development of all aforesaid towns.

Projects originating in all four towns feature multiple innovative activities that will ultimately improve local life quality, redirecting all locations onto new development paths.

Jarosław will deliver activities in areas of adapting to climate changes and improving air quality. Activities supporting digital transformation will be hugely important as well, enhancing the quality of services provided by the town as well as local living standards.

Jasło is focused on socio-economic development. Project outcomes will involve improvements to local residents’ life quality by: enhancing overall activeness, bettering access to local transportation services, boosting business activity, improving access to vocational education, reinforcing the effect of local residents identifying with the town, supporting excluded individuals, and raising ecological awareness.

Krosno will create a Youth Activity Centre, and develop cycling infrastructure and pocket parks. It will also foster entrepreneurship in the young community and educate future business staff, i.a. in dual university curriculum and soft competency training formats. The city is partnering with nine organisations for purposes of the project.

Nisko is planning sizeable ecological education activities addressing local residents, efforts to create desirable local entrepreneurship development conditions, and an expansion of the local rest and recreation offer.

“The agreement we signed today concerns a project of huge importance to the town of Jarosław. A large team worked on it for eighteen months. Once delivered, it will mainly allow us to take proper care of public space and improve air quality by launching ecological means of public transport, opening a Public Transport & Transfer Centre at our railway station, and implementing the SMART CITY concept to digitise multiple services, make people’s lives easier and encourage them to choose our town as their future place to live. I am very happy we received such considerable funding. It will allow us to make Jarosław a place extraordinarily life-, residence- and work-friendly,” was how Waldemar Paluch, Mayor of the town of Jarosław, summarised the development.

“Over 40 people representing various communities worked to design our ‘Jasło – My Town, My Home’ project. I would like to use this opportunity to thank them for their commitment and time – we found every contribution, every opinion important and valuable. We are grateful for the funds we have received, as they will let us deliver tasks crucial to our town’s socio-economic development,” emphasised Ryszard Pabian, Mayor of the town of Jasło.

“Krosno is working to meet the needs of the young, remaining open to grassroot initiatives and actively collaborating with non-governmental organisations. Intending to turn increasingly greener, the town is focused on business development. We have joined forces with local residents and third sector representatives to design a project combining all these aspects, making Krosno an even better place to live,” remarked
Tomasz Soliński, Deputy Mayor of the town of Krosno.

“All activities planned will contribute to the dynamic development of our town and improve local living conditions, key project outcomes including the implementation of the New Development Path for Nisko, comprising i.a. the introduction of a state-of-the-art IT and foreign languages curricula system across primary and secondary schools. We would like to thank our Association of Polish Cities advisors and all participants of the Local Development Cluster established at the stage of application documents drafting for supporting our project design efforts, and Programme donors for assisting Polish local governments in their strategic development endeavours,” said Waldemar Ślusarczyk, Mayor of the Municipality and Town of Nisko.