Project History

MileSTONES III constitutes the third project of the partners, in their joint efforts for the preservation and valorization of cultural heritage as a stepping stone to tourism development, expanded in an area-wide level.

MileSTONES III is already illustrating quite a precedent: 

The 1st project, which was implemented within the IPA CBC Programme “Greece-Albania 2007-2013”, triggered a series of promising events for cross-border culture. Notably, the Municipality of Dodoni awarded for the initial project MileSTONES on the annual event BRAVO 2018, the biggest forum for Social Dialogue on sustainable Development in Greece, where more than 246 actions were included. MileSTONES II entitled “Encouraging tourism development through the preservation and promotion of the cross border cultural and natural resources”, which is currently under implementation, ranked 1st among the proposals within the 2nd Call of the Interreg IPA CBC “Greece-Albania 2014-2020”.

The cross-border area faces difficulties to link their cultural assets with tourism development, in the benefit of local and regional sustainable economic growth. The majority of the visitors view the cross-border cultural and natural sights as “day visitor attractions”, falsely considering them as a stopover rather than an integrated destination. However, the cross-border cultural assets combined, can actually create an integrated tourist destination, a path in history & culture.

MileSTONES III comes as an urgency; a link between the preservation actions of the cultural heritage implemented in these projects and their promotion through sustainable tourism, utilizing traditional assets, expanding to creative industries, infrastructures & networks and applying capacity-building tools and techniques beyond current practices.

Acknowledging both the financial limits of the previous projects & the stronger capacity that the partnership has built of the implementation of cultural heritage projects, MileSTONES III emphasize on Expanding cultural assets and Establishing a strong alliance between local stakeholders. The goal is to significantly expand the scale and scope and cover many areas of Epirus and Vlore within a tourist-oriented strategy to revitalize cultural heritage and manage its creative use to facilitate a qualitative leap in terms of economic development.

MileSTONES III fully corresponds to the strengths of the Programme area being the important cultural heritage & the common cultural characteristics, and provides solutions to the area Weaknesses lacking alternative tourist activity, by developing innovative forms of tourist employment & entrepreneurship in the cultural and creative sectors and the very active involvement of citizens of the cross-border area.

The partnership fully acknowledges the need to expand cross-border cultural valorization into large-scale events which shall demonstrate the effectiveness of cultural tourism, inspire local stakeholders and be the spark for cross-border tourism development.

The main approach is to capitalize on the outputs of previous cultural & tourism projects & initiatives to expand the scope and enhance the effectiveness of the planned actions, maximizing the investment value. Thus, the project will create region-wide effects in the benefit of the local and cross-border population, setting a great example and unlocking the potential of other areas to enhance and promote their cultural assets.