Session "Cohesion Policy meets Social Enterprises" at the EWRC 2018
RaiSE, Social Seeds and EURADA co-organised a session on 11 October at the European Week of Regions and Cities 2018. The session took place at the Delegation to the EU of Emilia-Romagna Region.
The partnership, entitled "Regions and cities for social innovation", was led by Emilia-Romagna Region, and included Catalonia, Podkarpackie, Navarra, Middle Black Sea, Bielsko-Biala, South Bohemia, Kainuu, Kranj, Weser-Ems and the European Association of Development Agencies.
Review of the session
The aim of the workshop was to exchange and transfer knowledge on social economy between different regional actors. The session discussed challenges that impact society and the role of regions, cities and social enterprises in addressing them. After talking about the Social Challenges Platform, the workshop focused on 4 pillars: (i) ecosystem for social innovation; (ii) financing structures and tools; (iii) access to market and internationalisation and (iv) skills and competences development. Innovative tools were introduced in the workshop, such as Sli.do voting system, that allowed the audience to directly interact with the speakers.
Representatives from the European Union, European regions and cities set the policy framework, evaluated strengths and weaknesses of the existing policy instruments and brought together experiences from Interreg Europe projects RaiSE and Social Seeds, as well as Horizon 2020 project ESSI (European Suport to Social Innovation). This workshop contributed to strengthen the dialogue between regions, cities and social economy stakeholders on opportunities and actions able to improve regional ecosystems and foster social economy.
RaiSE participation
Maria Baracsi (IFKA) coordinated the round table "Financing social innovation", in which Lourdes Ridameya, Chief of Promotion of Institut Català de Finances - the public financial institution of Catalonia - explained their financial instruments in general and, more specifically, the special loans that they have for the social and cooperative economy and for social housing.
Clàudia Danesi (ACCIÓ) coordinated the round table "Access to market and internationalisation", in which Paula Veciana, Director of Social Business City Barcelona, explained their ecosystem to support social business and the tools and programmes through which they foster social transformation.
Roberta Dall'Olio (ERVET) participated in the round table "Skills Development" and introduced RaiSE project and the conclusions of the Study on the social enterprises ecosystem in Emilia-Romagna region. She finally presented the conclusions of the event.
