The meeting took place in the village of Valdeavellano de Tera, Region of Castile and  Leon, with the participation of 28 attendants, including key stakeholders from SOCENT  SPAs participating regions and representants of the partnering organizations: 

  • General Directorate for Social Economy and Self-Employed Persons – Regional
  • Government of Castile and Leon (Lead partner – Spain)
  • NGOD Cives Mundi (Spain)
  • Social Impact (Germany)
  • Lapland University of Applied Sciences (Finland)
  • Not-for-profit organization EPIC (Slovakia)
  • Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family of the Slovak Republic (Slovakia)

The programme was designed by Cives Mundi, together with Altekio, a non-profit social  enterprise based in Madrid, that was hired to provide an agenda and lead the event  with 4 workshop facilitators. 

Mr. Joaquin Alcalde Sanchez, Director of Cives Mundi, Mr. Manuel López Represa,  Delegate of the Regional Government of Castile and Leon in Soria, and Mr. Amancio  Martínez Marín, Provincial County Representative and Mayor of Valdeavellano de  Tera, opened the interregional thematic workshop by welcoming the participants.  Mr. Marcelo Segales, from the Fundación Tomillo1, made a brief introduction to the  workshop presenting a “Comparative analysis of the measures included in the  diagnoses on social entrepreneurship in the four regions under study within the  framework of the SOCENT SPAs Project.” 

Networking and Team Building

First activity was a mapping of the participants, placing themselves around the space  as if it was the map of Europe, then having a whole picture of the participant’s origin.  After that, a ‘Speed Dating’ activity was done, which consisted in making two lines,  one in front of the other, having every person one another in front, preferably some  unknown, and then answering the following questions:

  • What is your relation with  sparsely populated areas? 
  • Which are for you the main  values of the sparsely  populated areas? 
  • Which is your role in this  meeting/project

 After this first connection among the participants, the next activity was the ‘Dyads’, a walk in pairs for 45 minutes around  the village exploring some questions for connecting with the essence of the project.  The questions had to be done in three rounds, having the same three questions for  each round, with the aim of getting more clear and deeper reflections and answers. 

The questions asked were the following:

  • How do you picture a desirable future around social entrepreneurship in
  • sparsely populated areas?
  • Which are the barriers and drivers to get to that picture?
  • How would you overcome those barriers and strengthen those drivers?

 Once the participants came back from the walk, a circle was done to share those  reflections. First, sharing the vision of the project (related to those questions). While the  sharing, one of the facilitators was capturing the main ideas in a wall paper:

The participants were asked to write down in sticky  notes the answer of the third question in the third  round (overcoming barriers and strengthening  drivers) that answers would be the basis for defining  goals in the four pre-defined strategic lines  identified in the previous interregional thematic  workshops and derived from the conclusions of the  Studies on Social Entrepreneurship in each region: Legal Framework, Financial and Fiscal Support, Improve Infrastructures, Social Innovation, Networks and Alliances.

The ideas were shared by the participants and then placed in a different wall  paper categorizing them among the strategic lines.

Defining Project Goals and Priority Actions

The first activity in the afternoon was working  in mixed groups for defining goals for each  strategic line, with the inspiration of the  previous ideas and the diagnostic report that was done previously to  the meeting.

The main goals defined were the following:

- Legal Framework:

Define Social Enterprise and Social Entrepreneurship

Reduction of bureaucracy

Special taxing system for social enterprises

- Financial and Fiscal Support:

  •  Financial education for enterprises and the public
  •  Regional development fund, private and public

- Improve Infrastructures:

  • Internet for everyone, everywhere
  • Public support services
  • Online medical consultation

- Social Innovation, Networks and Alliances:

  • Supply chains
  • Improving knowledge on Social Innovation
  • Social incubator for rural areas
  • Join/support Smart Social Specialization Platform

Once the goals were defined, the activity that was carried out was a ‘Coffee Dialogue’  which consisted in four work groups divided by regions and in each of them there was  two people from the corresponding region that were giving coherence during the time  that the activity lasted. The rest of the people could switch table between every rounds.