Giulia Sostero

Giulia Sostero is the Coordinator of the ASWAT (Africa, SouthWest Asia and Türkiye Department) at European Association for Local Democracy (ALDA). 

She holds an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degree in Inter-Mediterranean Mediation (International Cooperation and Development) from Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier III (France), Università Ca'’ Foscari in Venice (Italy) and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain). She previously worked in the field of migration and asylum in Italy and volunteered in the youth sector.

As ASWAT Coordinator in ALDA, she manages various projects, among others, targeting Turkish civil society organisations as well as local authorities, aiming to favour exchange and build long-term local and international partnerships. She manages EU (ENI, DG DEVCO, Erasmus+ and more) and non-EU funded projects,  also supporting the project development phase. For example, she co-manages THE: PLACE programme (Mercator Foundation) and supported the WE ACT project (EU Delegation to Türkiye). The projects she coordinates focus on citizen participation and local democracy, keeping gender equality, youth involvement, and sustainable development as transversal axes. 

She also intervenes in the projects as a trainer, in particular on the topic of participatory democracy. Along with the team she coordinates, she represents ALDA in international networks and events and has acquired expertise in partnership building.

She is a native speaker of Italian and French, and also speaks English, Spanish and Arabic (along with basics of Turkish and Swedish).