During the final conference of the Foundation Interreg Europa project held in Rzeszów, Poland, on June 15, 2023, RRDA representative Marek Duda had the opportunity to present the effects of the project implementation in the Podkarpackie Region.
All activities covered by the Podkarpackie Action Plan were implemented in accordance with the assumptions. The Podkarpacki Action Plan included two actions.
Action 1: The first was the introduction of a new measure to the ROP of the Podkarpackie Region regarding "Working capital support for micro and small enterprises - grant support" for companies that suffered as a result of the Covid19 pandemic, and was carried out as planned. Support was provided in the form of a non-refundable grant. The goal was to enable businesses to keep financial liquidity for maintaining business activity. The grant was intended for businesses struggling with financial difficulties (e.g. drops in sales and revenue) that arose as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic and the accompanying disruptions in the functioning of the economy.
Detailed statistical data, summaries of the status of project implementation and settlement of subsidies by entrepreneurs were prepared, and barriers and limitations indicated by subsidy beneficiaries were identified. These activities were aimed, on the one hand, at assessing the policy change and its effectiveness and, on the other hand, at improving this type of support in the future, including: in the 2021-2027 perspective.
Action 2: The second action is a new project supporting youth entrepreneurship - "Business-oriented young people", implemented by RRDA, in which all goals and assumptions of the project were achieved.
The main goal was to improve the entrepreneurial competences of 48 young people aged 18-29 who were economically inactive or unemployed who were not registered in the employment office, including disabled people living in the Podkarpackie Region, as well as improving the situation on the market people who would started a business by 30/06/2023. All assumed project indicators were achieved and thanks to the project, 41 new companies were established in the Podkarpackie Voivodeship.
The monitoring of the action plan proceeded as planned and all its objectives were achieved. A great facilitation was the fact that both activities were carried out by RRDA as the Project Managing Institution. Therefore, all monitoring activities were carried out smoothly and without any problems.
Project activities were inspired by good practices of project partners and contributed to achieving the goals of the FOUNDATION project. While creating the proposed solutions and changing the policy in Action 1, the experiences and good practices from several project partners were taken into account, from a Lithuanian Partner, a good practice called No Quarantine on the Internet, from a partner from Great Britain called GC Business Growth Hub and from a partner from Hungary the good practice ReStart.
Action 2 was inspired by the Good Practice that is run by Chamber of Commerce along with Fondazione REI (technology transfer institution) and IFOA from Italy. Withing this good practice has been created an access point to help the would-be entrepreneurs to open their business activity. The second good practice was Practice and Student Inc. Supporting Student Entrepreneurs presented by Munster Technological University. The Irish solution assumes supporting entrepreneurship among young people.
