New Crops – Social entrepreneurship to create new opportunities for socially excluded in rural areas Erasmus Project

Project Title

New Crops – Social entrepreneurship to create new opportunities for socially excluded in rural areas

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Agriculture, forestry and fisheries; Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship); Access for disadvantaged

Project Summary

In the recent years, social economy proved itself to be a vital source of growth and jobs in the rural areas that are facing a higher risk of poverty, and significant problems in access to adequate education and training, with agriculture still significant in terms of employment. Social enterprises and coops play a key role in involving rural inhabitants as European citizens more fully in society as stakeholders, i.e. workers, volunteers and users of these enterprises. In order to access opportunities created by various EU policies that can have a positive influence on poverty of rural areas, enterprises and inhabitants of rural areas need an adequate and constant access to training and advise services, tailored to their needs, competences and characteristics. The project contributes significantly to the development of the social economy in rural areas by the fulfillment of its three specific objectives: 1) the design and development of innovative training and coaching materials for start-up and management of social enterprises and coops in rural areas; 2) the development of the capacity of training organizations involved in adult education and their staff and 3) the development of alternative learning approaches that facilitate inclusion of marginalized citizens into entrepreneurship training activities including new media based training to widen access to adult learning. The project was implement by a consortium of 5 partners: four cooperative/ social enterprise network organizations and training providers from countries selected in the project that represent different cooperative &social enterprise patterns: Trentino/IT, Almeria/SP, and Västra Götaland/ West Sweden, where the cooperative formula is a successful model, allowing farmers to enjoy the added value of their products, creating employment and contributing to the sustainability of rural areas, providing also disadvantaged worker integration and Romania where coops and social enterprises are still at an emerging stage. The main project results are: 40 best practices of social enterprises and coops identified and promoted, with the most successful business models documented into 16 case studies for training purposes; 4 country-specific policy reports published; 4 packages of training materials including a general introductory material on start-up and management of social enterprises and coops and specific modules focused on different types of entities i.e.farmers coops, work integration and social services social coops, rural social enterprises and coops (micro-credit, utilities and consumer social enterprises), and respectively green social enterprises, based on collective experience sharing from the 4 countries; 2 start-up do-it-yourself guides for coops and social enterprises – one for agricultural cooperatives and one for other types of social enterprises or coops; an innovative informational and learning movie – “The Story of a New Crop” and the European toolkit for trainers, advisers and facilitators working with starting up and developing coops and social enterprises in rural areas, which integrates the whole research and documentation efforts of the consortium in an unique training and learning collection of materials suitable to be used widely at European level. In terms of access and dissemination, the impact of the project was: over 500 trainers, facilitators and consultants for community social enterprises and coops, policymakers and leaders in the cooperative & social enterprise systems in the participating countries gained unlimited access to the newly produced materials and were informed about the availability of such materials through direct emails, over 2000 social enterprise practitioners that received the periodical newsletters of the Institute of Social Economy are able to use tools from the project publications; 251 end-users (practitioners from or in rural areas) directly involved in the pilot dissemination workshops were informed, to which we add the 41 trainers, researchers and advisers specializing in social enterprise & cooperative management that gained knowledge and information on practices and policies in other member states and EU level during the 4 short-term joint staff training events organized in each of the participating countries. The 25 members of the European Economic and Social Committee were directly informed about the outcomes of the project. New contacts have been built and other key relevant stakeholders and initiatives existent at EU level have been identified and can be base for further common initiatives and better options for making our work more efficient. On the long run, the partner organizations will benefit from the improved training capacity. The target groups – social enterprises and coops, as well as start-up groups or other training providers that want to initiate such enterprises have open and unlimited access to all the materials, on the project’s webpage www.ies.org.ro/erasmus.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 241572,67 Eur

Project Coordinator

Fundatia pentru Dezvoltarea Societatii Civile & Country: RO

Project Partners

• Coompanion Kooperativ Utveckling Skaraborg
• Federazione trentina della cooperazione
• UNIVERSIDAD DE ALMERIA
• ASOCIACION DE ORGANIZACIONES DE PRODUCTORES DE FRUTAS Y HORTALIZAS DE ALMERIA