Good practice:

Regional municipality for social enterprises

Banská Bystrica Self-Governing Region (BBSGR) is the largest of eight regional municipalities of Slovakia. It has a population of approximately 660 thousand people, and it is divided into 13 districts. Five of them are listed among the lagging regions suffering from various challenges such as high level of unemployment, poor infrastructure, underdeveloped economy or high level of intergenerational poverty. Solutions of mentioned challenges may be offered also by social enterprises operating in a viable and enabling ecosystem.
Above the Act on social economy and social enterprises adopted on the national level in May 2018, the BBSGR decided to create regional measures that may support the region's growth of social entrepreneurship culture. Having social enterprises support included among the key priorities of the strategy for developing the Banska Bystrica region, the regional council also committed certain financial and human resources for this purpose.
Since 2018, the BBSGR established 3 social enterprises employing several dozens of people, launched free-of-charge advisory services for social enterprises from the region, advocated for a wider use of social- buying practices and introduced the regional brand, that offers also products/services delivered by social enterprises from the region.
During the first wave of COVID-19 crisis, BBSGR supported social enterprises from the region by increasing the purchase of their products as e.g. face masks.

The yearly budget allocated for activities aiming at the direct support of social enterprises in the region is appr. 130 000 EUR.
Regarding human resources, the activities related to social entrepreneurship and social enterprises support in the region are delivered by three people.

Between 2019 and 2020 Banska Bystrica self-governing region established or co-established three social enterprises which offered quality jobs for 35 people distant from the labour market. Two social economy experts are actively networking with other 32 social enterprises registered in the region. The self-governing region also applies the social clauses in their procurement; thus, the social enterprises are regularly contracted as services/goods providers.

Among the key challenges may be the lack of general understanding of the social entrepreneurship principles among the officers working for the regional municipality, which often causes the slowness in adopting the specific measures. Effective information and the educational campaign is needed.

The practice can be easily adopted for the specific region's needs and a significant financial coverage is not a precondition for its replication. Apart from a direct financial support, self-governing regions are handling adequate competencies through which they may significantly support the ecosystem enabling a smooth operation of social enterprises in the regions (e.g. public procurement practice, systemic involvement of social enterprises to the provision of social services, social enterprises in the communication strategy of the region etc.). The only must for a meaningful replication of the practice is proper and comprehensive understanding of the social entrepreneurship/enterprise principles at the side of self-governing administration officers and self-governing region representatives..