ESIRA acknowledges that innovative social economy initiatives, focusing on local networks, competences, and resources, are able to recognise the important role of citizen-led activities to fulfil the needs of rural areas, especially marginalised ones. Nevertheless, many policies and initiatives fail to effectively support them and/or engage the more vulnerable groups of population. The main objective of ESIRA is to contribute to the rollout of place-based innovative social economy initiatives for rural inclusion and development in (marginalised) rural areas by supporting enabling frameworks, well-interconnected policy architecture and directly piloting innovative solutions which ultimately build more inclusive, resilient and prosperous rural areas. To achieve it, ESIRA will implement a work plan focused on (i) the research of community-led rural innovation spaces able to connect and empower actors, reinforce the social capital and sense of community, considering the great diversity of rural areas within Europe, and eventually (ii) nurturing and piloting social economy initiatives that strengthen the inclusiveness and living conditions of different groups of population in vulnerable situation, from the improvement in the provision of (social) services, economic diversification, and sustainable management of the natural capital. This will enable to (iii) stocktake and formulate recommendations for policymakers to better support the third sector and local communities, increasing the understanding of the needs and challenges of vulnerable groups of population and social economy, and (iv) boost the knowledge-exchange among local actors, building up their capacities and facilitating the scale up and replication of social economy initiatives across Rural Europe. 9 regions in 7 European countries will be involved in the project. The exploitation and dissemination activities will aim at expanding those regional spaces and replicating our concept in new regions.

Joining the Pact for Skills on Proximity and Social Economy, the European Social Innovation Campus (ESIC) contributes to the challenge of the upskilling and reskilling of 5% of the workforce and entrepreneurs of the sector each year to tackle the green and digital transitions in the social economy by boosting social innovation capacities. The Alliance brings together higher education and vocational education and training, social economy organizations and enterprises from several European countries as well as European level actors. Drawing on evidence regarding the skills needs of occupational profiles, the Alliance boosts the provision of new skills and addresses skills mismatches by creating a new general Core Curriculum for the social economy and curricula to different EQF levels. The Alliance designs and delivers transnational education and training content, as well as co-produce teaching and training methodologies for quick uptake of the contents at regional and local levels and for emerging occupational profiles. In addition, the project will establish a strong communication and dissemination network, promoting the social economy sector as a career choice and supporting the development of a sense of initiative and entrepreneurial mind-sets in the EU.The Alliance will establish and maintain the European Social Innovation Campus platform that distributes project results (target number of the visitors: +10 000). The dynamic Skills Monitor integrated in the platform will host skills intelligence data in an open data format, and it will be accessible to all stakeholders and researchers. Events, meetings, and co-creation will integrate diverse actors into the process and help to disseminate its results. The target number of organizations in the research and local stakeholder committees: +70, number of learners in the training programmes pilots: +375, and number of people attending the dissemination events: +500.

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.

N.A.

With a growing aging population, the EU faces increased demand for quality social elderly care. However, intricate legal and policy landscapes for Social Economy organizations (SEs) contribute to poor working conditions, gender bias and innovation challenges, hindering the provision of sustainable and inclusive social services by SEs. This is particularly exacerbated in rural areas, where access to facilities and technology deployment and logistics is complicated. The EU context is facing the urgent need for affordable services and to rethink the dominant recipient model of social care, which challenges the sense of dignity, identity and quality of life of both elderly people and care givers. SONYA emerges as a pioneering initiative to assess the role of SEs in retaining and attracting social elderly care workers to foster social innovation effectiveness in rural areas. Our vision seeks to scale up SEs successful activities beyond tool, support services and methods development by empowering SEs to develop participatory multi-actor networks and social and environmental community initiatives, identifying and transferring social innovations for inclusive employment and better working conditions while measuring impact with scientific precision for improving legal and policy frameworks supporting SEs. SONYA is implemented by a consortium of scientific partners with expertise in operationalising multi-actor participatory models, sustainability assessment, workers' rights and effective representation, and policy making; enabling entities representing 3 EU SEs models varying in size, network development and national context; and support actors. SONYA will facilitate a transition towards more respected, inclusive and valued social elderly care services, beyond medical care. Targeted SEs will be able to efficiently create quality jobs, contribute to equal opportunities and socioeconomic inclusion of disadvantaged groups and help revitalise EU’s rural and depopulated areas.