On 22 and 23 September 2026, the URWAN partnership met in Ragusa and Ferla (Sicily, Italy) for the Kick-off Meeting of the project’s Transfer Phase. Hosted by SVI.MED.- Euromediterranean Centre for The Sustainable Development, the meeting gathered 25 participants from Albania, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain and marked the official start of the transfer of the URWAN Enabler Pack to seven new municipalities: Atripalda (Italy), Durrës (Albania), Patras (Greece), Alzira (Spain), and Palmela, Sesimbra and Setúbal (Portugal).
These receiver municipalities will now work with the tools developed and tested during the Test phase of the project: the NbS Catalogue, the Start Park Guidelines, the training materials and the URWAN Checklist.
The meeting opened in Ragusa with the tools themselves. Introduced by the Lead partner ANCI Lazio, MedCities guided partners through the Enabler Pack and the URWAN Checklist, while each receiver partner introduced its municipality and the sites where Nature-based Solutions (NbS) could take shape. From this first exchange came the principle that ran through both days: “Before choosing a Nature-based Solution, we need to be clear about the problem we want to solve,” said Giulio Conte of IRIDRA. “And often several small interventions spread across the territory work better, and are easier to manage, than a single large one.”
That principle became tangible in Ferla, where the partnership was welcomed by the Mayor and the Councillor for Ecology and Urban Hygiene. At the Valle dell’Anapo school, partners visited the Wall2Water – a Living Green Wall – built within the NAWAMED project: it collects greywater from the school’s washbasins, treats it through the plants and reuses it for toilet flushing. The visit also showed how the system has grown and improved over the years. A new system of sensors has been installed for continuous monitoring for research purposes and to help the municipality with maintenance. There is also a small rain garden to increase non-conventional water collection. The rain garden water collection basin is treated and reused, and will be further enhanced by receiving greywater from the changing rooms of the new sports facility nearby. An NbS, partners saw, is something a community keeps adjusting over time.
Then it was the receiver municipalities’ turn. In Ferla’s municipal Auditorium, partners got to know Start Park, URWAN’s way of engaging communities, where a game is one of the main tools, and left with a shared idea of what the Master Plans Dossiers should contain and who does what. Thus, each delegation put its chosen site on the table and talked it through with the IRIDRA experts, and every site got the green light.
The conversation also looked beyond the project. Partners discussed how to involve new territories and administrations, and how URWAN’s solutions can enter projects in other sectors. “We need to move beyond a sector-based view of interventions,” said Barbara Sarnari of SVI.MED., who shared an example. “When knowledge and skills are integrated, Nature-based Solutions bring benefits in several areas at once and improve the quality of life of communities.” Partners could also see urban regeneration with their own eyes. At the end of the first day they walked through the Santa Domenica Valley, a green corridor in the heart of Ragusa that has just been regenerated through a project promoted by the municipality.
The next milestone is the URWAN School in Rome, in March 2027. It will train technical staff from the municipalities and the facilitators who will support community engagement through Start Park.
Follow URWAN’s social media channels for updates from the seven municipalities.
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- Meeting in Ragusa for the Transfer Phase of URWAN project
