Event was held as a communicational seminar for public sector decision makers (members of boards and councils of municipalities) and representatives of public sector development bodies in South Karelia region on 17th April in Imatra. Event was organized in Theatre Imatra premises between 13.30 – 15.30 pm.
Seminar program consisted of three presentations:
- SARURE project Lead Partners presentation: presentation of the operations and role of Teruel Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Services, challenges of retail, presentation of model project Rural Multiservice. Short summary about the reasons and motivation to participate in SARURE.
- Finnish Commerce Federation: Local shops as a centers for multiservice. Presentation described the current situation of retail in general in Finland and the retailing trends. In addition to this, the focus was in the role of retail in rural areas in Finland.
- Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Finland: presentation of new, this year starting funding experiment targeted to village shops development towards multiservice points. The funding seeks to strengthen services role in these areas and to ensure the essential services in rural areas
Participation of Chamber of Commerce of Teruel was organized via Skype. The video connection was assisted with big screen in venue. This allowed the fluent as possible communication despite the physical distance.
The number of the participants was 14 – several last minutes cancellations decreased the amount of participants. The event was informal, discussion was lively and active and both speakers and participants presented questions to each other.
The planned duration of the event was 2 hours. Because of the amount of the conversation, event continued to 16.00 pm.
Referring to participants comments after the event, the seminar raised new ideas and thoughts among participants. The spontaneous networking was also generated at after the official ending. Also we as project representatives received meeting invitations concerning SARURE and topics discussed at the event.
