Dear friends of the “DaRe to Connect” Project,
As the year comes to an end, it is time to hold on for a moment and take a look back. Our Interreg project “D2C – DaRe to Connect” started in June and quickly developed from adolescence to maturity. According to the project title, the year 2018 can be summarized with the word “connect”. During the Technical Kick-Off Meeting in July in Nuremberg we connected ourselves yet a bit more. The same counts for several meetings of project partners working closer together in the Pilot Regions. 
We connected our project with regional stakeholders as well as other projects. One important milestone of this capitalization of our project certainly was the Public Kick-Off Conference in November, taking place in the middle of the Danube region – in Bratislava. Here we had the opportunity to exchange experience with transnational projects like MaGICLandscapes and the Alpine-Carpathian Corridor. It also figured again how important the contribution of our project to the European Union Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR) will be.
Last but not least of course the work on the question how protected areas along the European Green Belt in the Danube region can be connected in practice also took the first major hurdles. While our remote sensing team set up satellite imagery data sets and GIS projects, the concrete aims of the Pilot Regions were defined and contacts to regional stakeholders deepened.
Thanks to the efforts of our project team of 11 partner-institutions from 8 countries we have built the best preconditions for a successful year 2019, filled with many connecting activities.
In the name of BUND Department Green Belt and the whole D2C-project-team I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy and peaceful new year 2019!
Martin Kuba