The four interregional site visits held from April to June of 2017 in the frame of the SOCENT SPAs project have provided ample opportunity to observe and learn from the regions’ different approaches of social entrepreneurship. In the course of the visits, we have made the following observations and drawn conclusions on how to benefit social entrepreneurship in Lapland:
• The situation in Spain and Slovakia is hard to compare to Finland, as Finland is a universalistic welfare state. Services provided by initiatives as La Exclusiva in Soria are taken care of by the Finnish municipalities in the form of taxi vouchers, which are available to those entitled (e.g. the elderly without other possibilities of transport) to do their shopping, visit doctors and take care of official matters.
• http://www.diariodesoria.es/noticias/soria/poblacion-marca-minimo-historico-88-830-habitantes_87007.html, Castille and Leon, Spain is a good example of advanced depopulation and its consequences for the whole region, if depopulation trends are not tackled in an early stage.
• Possibly due to a more similar social service structure, German examples of social enterprises were easier to compare to and apply for Lapland. Similar initiatives exist in both Brandenburg and Lapland, e.g. the http://mug-brandenburg.de/ work integration social enterprise and the https://salla.4h.fi/ association’s employment initiative.
• Something that was observed in all four regions was that successful initiatives, such as in https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altk%C3%BCnkendorf, http://www.muranskadlhaluka.sk/, http://www.heraldodesoria.es/noticias/soria/soria-provincia/2017/05/29/magana-gana-concurso-hispasat-para-tener-ano-gratis-acceso-internet-1178356-1521033.html and http://www.visitsodankyla.fi/en/travel/welcome.php, were often carried and initiated by one person, who took on a pioneering role.
