Webinar: Civil society making transition

Webinar: Civil society making transition

The webinar presents two interesting civil society cases related to urban gardening, circular economy and community building. Participants can share and compare similar cases from their countries. The webinar is targeted at regional and local authorities, researchers, business and civil society actors that are interested in the role and engagement of civil society in enhancing sustainable life.
Our fantastic speakers are:
Tuomas Ilander, Founder of Blokgarden Community Garden
Lauri Mei, Paranduskelder community maker/repair space
Register as soon as possible/by 15 January via this link: https://link.webropol.com/ep/webinarJan2025

About the “We make transition!” project

About the “We make transition!” project

Local and regional authorities have a crucial role in driving resilience – societal ability to adapt and react. Due to the complexity of sustainability challenges, there is a need to mobilise all levels of society to create and implement solutions that enable systemic changes in our unsustainable practices. Civil society actors – associations, social entrepreneurs, cooperatives, communities, individuals – can have a pioneering role in enhancing ecological and social sustainability.

We make transition! project engages a great number of regional and local authorities, civil society, and other innovation actors from the Baltic Sea region. Partners from six countries cooperate with altogether 12 cities and municipalities in implementing local transition arena workshop processes including co-creation of a joint vision, pathways, concrete solutions, and initiatives that enhance the cooperation with civil society actors. The topics of the processes focus on either 1) sustainable lifestyle, 2) agriculture & food, 3) biodiversity, or 4) circular & sharing economy. The main output of the project will be a practical manual for applying the transition management approach to make strategy processes such as climate plans, roadmaps, and local strategies more interactive to involve also civil society actors.

On this platform we invite you to read and comment our publications including:

  • Case studies on civil society making sustainability transitions.

  • Baltic Sea region vision of sustainable life and recommendations co-created by a transnational group of change agents.

  • How to improve cooperation between local authorities and civil society actors? – a transnational gap analysis.

  • How to use the Transition Arena method to empower cooperation between local authorities, civil society and business actors? – A manual for regional and local authorities (available in spring 2025).

Find more about the project here.

Case studies on civil society making sustainability transitions
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Case studies on civil society making sustainability transitions

We collected a variety of inspiring success stories from six Baltic Sea region countries!

We make transition! project engages local authorities, civil society actors and businesses in co-creative processes to enhance cooperation for eco-social sustainability. One of the core aims is to improve understanding of the role and added value of active civil society for sustainability.

We collected many incredibly inspiring case studies related to social sustainability, circular economy, biodiversity, sustainable food and lifestyle from the Baltic Sea region. You can read about them in this publication:

Find the vision document here.

Case studies on civil society making sustainability transitions
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Case studies on civil society making sustainability transitions

We make transition! collected a variety of inspiring success stories of “civil society making sustainability transitions”. Case studies are related to social sustainability, circular economy, biodiversity, sustainable food and lifestyle from the Baltic Sea region. The case studies provide an outlook on the power of creative people and initiatives revealing the fundamental value of active civil society for social innovations. At the same time, the case studies show how crucial the pioneering role of civil society in enhancing sustainability can be. All case studies are widely respected examples of people who act according to their values and persistently strive for good communication and cooperation with the public sector and other stakeholders. This requires openness, listening skills and active role of the public authorities as well. Some cases have turned into business or projects from which people can make their living. This publication gathers the best examples from six Baltic Sea region countries. We hope that it raises discussion, learning and respect among transnational cooperators, national, regional and local authorities, decisionmakers, civil society & business actors and the general public.

Find inspirational cases here.

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The Social Innovation Tournament

The Social Innovation Tournament

Save the date! The Social Innovation Tournament is approaching. It recognises and supports the best European impact entrepreneurs. It promotes innovative ideas and rewards initiatives that contribute to creating social, ethical and/or environmental impact.
The winning projects in the General Category and the Special Category will be awarded a first or second prize of €100 000 and €40 000 respectively. In 2023, the Special Category prizes will go to projects focusing on sustainable cities and communities. The grand finale will be held in Stockholm on 27-28 September 2023.

Register for online or onsite attendance – https://institute.eib.org/sit-2023/

APPLICATIONS OPEN Young Entrepreneurs Challenge

APPLICATIONS OPEN
Young Entrepreneurs Challenge

With less than 2 weeks to go the applications are open for the Young Entrepreneurs Challenge deadline. The Challenge is an online entrepreneurship competition looking for people aged 16-25 with fresh, new and innovative technology-led business ideas.

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The challenge

Got a great business idea or concept? If you’re 16-25 and have a fresh and innovative technology led idea for a business, or have started one already – then we want to hear from you! Our competition seeks the best young minds from across Europe, young people with vision, social awareness and the ambition to achieve.

Our Grand Prize Winner will receive a £10,000 / €11,000* grant, a mentorship package and pro-bono support to accelerate their business idea or start-up. It’s the opportunity to make your mark, get noticed and put your ideas into action.

All shortlisted finalists will also receive the Young Entrepreneurs Challenge Masterclass Support Programme. An assigned enterprise support mentor who will create a 1-2-1 support plan focusing on your key priorities. These could be addressing knowledge gaps, or being matched with services. You will also receive a series of masterclasses across the next year on a range of topics and with a variety of industry expert speakers. Last year’s masterclasses focused on: – Business Finance, Equity Sharing & Legal Structures, R&D, Strategic Planning + Forecasting.

More information: https://youngentrepreneurschallenge.com/

 

 

Inclusive Business Creation – Good Practice Compendium

Inclusive Business Creation – Good Practice Compendium

Today we present to you a report from the OECD’s Local Economic and Employment Development Programme (LEED) provides innovative ideas and practical solutions for how to build inclusive and sustainable communities with quality jobs for all. This series explores how national and local governments can promote local development, leveraging the social economy, entrepreneurship, employment and skills, and specific sectors such as culture.

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Inclusive Business Creation

Good Practice Compendium

This compendium contains 20 case studies of public programmes in European countries that are successfully supporting business creation by people from disadvantaged and under-represented groups in entrepreneurship. The populations targeted by these programmes include youth, women, seniors, the unemployed, immigrants, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities. Each programme description details the programme’s activities and approach, assesses the challenges faced in development and implementation, and offers tips for successful transfer to other contexts.

Public policy actions at national, regional and local levels can make an important contribution to economic growth and social inclusion by promoting business creation and self-employment by people who otherwise could remain outside of the mainstream of entrepreneurship. This compendium demonstrates that workable approaches exist and can help policymakers learn from each other’s experiences to achieve widespread results.

https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264251496-en  9789264251496 (PDF) 9789264257504 (EPUB)

Authors: OECD and European Union

Access to the full reading material here: 9789264251496-en

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Funding opportunities for social economy – update 2022

Funding opportunities for social economy – update 2022

Social economy and inclusive entrepreneurship are topics with transversal relevance for a variety of policy fields and economic sectors. Funding opportunities can therefore be found in most EU funding programmes.

Some of these programmes include dedicated measures. Others can be tapped into by social economy and inclusive entrepreneurship actors, even if they do not target them explicitly. This official EU webpage https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1561&langId=en  provides an overview of the most relevant EU funding programmes.

Employment and Social Innovation Programme and its 2021-2027 successor

Microfinance and social enterprise finance are key enablers for the development of social and inclusive entrepreneurship. This is why the EU is providing support to microfinance and social enterprise finance providers in the form of both repayable and non-repayable finance to enhance their potential in creating jobs and building a more social and inclusive Europe.

Microfinance

Lack of access to finance is one of the main obstacles micro-enterprises are facing. A significant unmet demand for microfinance exists for vulnerable groups, which face difficulties in accessing conventional credit markets, for start-ups, as well as existing micro-enterprises.

Microcredit providers play an important role in channelling EU support to entrepreneurs. However, this young and growing sector is quite heterogeneous due to the disparity of legal and institutional frameworks in Member States and the diversity of the microcredit providers.

The Commission has launched the following support and actions targeting microcredit providers under the Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI) programme:

  • a European Code of Good Conduct for Microcredit Provision  defining a unified set of standards for the microfinance sector in Europe. To be able to benefit from an EaSI Microfinance Guarantee, non-bank microcredit providers have to sign up to the Code and banks have to endorse it;
  • a guarantee for microcredit providers to increase lending to micro-entrepreneurs;
  • a Technical Assistance programme, which provides an institutional assessment or a financial rating to microcredit providers, and supports the evaluation of their compliance with the European Code of Good Conduct for Microcredit Provision. It also provides capacity building and operates a dedicated helpdesk for microfinance providers;
  • an EaSI MicPro database which acts as a source of information about microcredit providers in each country.

Social enterprise finance

As highlighted in the Social economy action plan, lack of access to finance is one of the obstacles for social entrepreneurship to thrive.

The EU is enabling access to investments of up to EUR 500,000 through the Programme for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI). Available support includes a guarantee, capacity building investments, a funded instrument and advisory support for social enterprise finance providers.

In addition, equity investments in social enterprises have been piloted under the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) Equity instrument, namely via funds linked to incubators/accelerators and co-investments with social business angels.

To complement financial instruments providing repayable finance, the Commission provides grant support with a view to addressing specific market gaps:

  • Grants aimed at covering part of the transaction costs of intermediaries. The grant serves as an incentive to intermediaries for making investments of below EUR 500,000 in social enterprises. Eight projects were selected in 2017 and an additional eight projects in 2019.
  • Grants for boosting the development of social finance markets in Europe: 21 pilot projects were selected in 2013, a further 20 projects were selected in 2016, and 14 projects in 2019. The projects served as basis for developing a practical guide entitled A recipe book for social finance.

The Commission also provides operating grants for EU-level networks active in the areas of microfinance and social enterprise finance. Moreover, Member States have the opportunity to support both microfinance and social enterprises through the European Social Fund.

In the period 2021-2027, the support to microfinance and social enterprises will be continued and reinforced under the InvestEU programme. More information will be available soon on the InvestEU portal. In addition, the Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI) strand under the European Social Fund Plus will complement the InvestEU instruments with EU level support for the development of social enterprises, the emergence of a social investment market, and the development of the market ecosystem around the provision of microfinance.

Other relevant EU funding programmes during 2021-2027

The European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) is an important funding source for promoting the social economy and social innovation at national, regional and local levels. Social economy organisations are well placed to achieve most of the ESF+ specific objectives, notably in relation to enhancing the inclusiveness of labour markets and access to quality employment.

At the EU level, the Commission will support transnational cooperation specifically with a view to accelerating the scaling up of social innovation.

In addition to dedicated funding provided via the InvestEU and ESF+, several other EU funding programmes are providing opportunities for the social economy, social innovation and inclusive entrepreneurship:

The European Commission makes use of the Funding & tender opportunities portal to ensure applicants have a common entry point to EU grants.

Information on how to access this funding has been gathered in an European Funding Toolkit by the Euclid Network and in a Funding Toolkit for Early-Stage Social Innovators developed in the context of the European Social Innovation Competition.

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This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

Third Sector and Social Economy – what is the difference?
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Third Sector and Social Economy – what is the difference?

Two terms that can often be encountered in the context of social entrepreneurship and social innovation are “third sector” and “social economy”. However, they are significantly less self-explanatory than the more commonly known “non-governmental sector”, “the non-profit sector” or “the charity sector”. To confuse things more, in scholarly articles  “third sector” and “social economy” often seem to be used interchangeably. But what do these terms mean and is it really the same thing?

In order to highlight the strong similarities and hence explain why the concepts are used synonymously, it is useful to first address the main differences.

Many social phenomena and the theoretical concepts that are built around them are heavily influenced by the social and cultural context where they have been developed. It is no different with the terms “third sector” and “social economy”. Lars Hulgård (2014) provides a comparison  in which he contrast the two concepts by pointing out that the idea of “third sector” can be believed to come from North America and entails voluntary and nonprofit organizations, but excludes cooperatives and mutuals because of the inherent non-profit restraint of the concept. “Social economy” on the other hand is to be considered as the European version of the third sector but with a wider scope; it includes cooperatives, mutual societies, associations, foundations and social enterprises. An important point is that the concept of social economy introduces a possibility to develop a broader understanding of the third sector where the defining factor of the third sector is not the nonprofit constraint but rather whether or not an organization is a part of “a non-capitalist economy” (Hulgård, 2014, p.72).

The same point has been raised by  Jean-Louis Laville arguing that the line should be drawn between “capitalist and social economy organizations” where in the latter “what is stressed at the organizational level is legal limits on private appropriation of benefits” ( 2010, p.228). In other words, the defining factor of social impact and social good organizations should not be the that they earn no money and function solely because on donations and  external funding, but rather how they earn the money and what is the profit is used for. In this way, instead of preserving rigide definitions of North American and European perspectives as they have developed historically, a more up to date version of the term “third sector” can be put in place. The has opened the field for the use of business tools in tackling societal issues. The change of trajectory has contributed to an acceleration of development of a variety of hybrid forms of initiatives that mix and match the inner-logics and practices of civil society and private sector and now are being recognized under the concepts of social entrepreneurship and social and solidarity economy.

References 

Hulgård, L., 2014. Social enterprise and the Third Sector – Innovative service delivery or a non-capitalist economy? In: J.Defourny, L. Hulgård & V. Pestoff, eds., Social Enterprise and the Third Sector: Changing European Landscapes in a Comparative Perspective. Oxon and New York: Routledge.

Laville, Jean-Louis. (2010). Solidarity Economy. 10.1007/978-0-387-93996-4_801.

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This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

6 Lessons for a More Human-Centered Leadership Practice
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6 Lessons for a More Human-Centered Leadership Practice

It is no secret that human-centered design thinking is an approach  to problem-solving that is perfectly suited for social economy organizations, social innovators and changemakers tackling complex societal issues. What is more, while the importance of leadership is by now more and more recognized in different types organizations across all sectors, rarely is inspiring leadership as crucial as in social impact organizations and initiatives where rallying people around an idea and a cause is essential for success. Hence, the blog article by IDEO U, the leading digital learning platform for design thinking methods,  on human-centered leadership and how to lead by empowering others is a valuable must read for anyone working with teams in the social impact sphere.

Below are 6 lessons by IDEO’s Lauren Collins and Harvard Business School Professor Frances Frei on what inspiring leadership means today.

1. Leadership is about what happens when you’re not there.

“We are only leading when we are centered on making others better.” — Frances Frei

Shift your mindset from focusing on your personal performance to how your presence impacts others. Your goal is to equip and empower people so they can continue to be awesome in your absence.

2. The Golden Rule is flawed.

“Use your curiosity to figure out how others want to be treated, and then lean into that behavior.” — Frances Frei

We’ve all been told to treat others as we’d like to be treated, but that logic is flawed. It works well when we’re around people who are just like us. But the more diverse and varied the group, the less true it is. Don’t assume others share your desires and opinions. Ask them what they need from you to show up as their most authentic selves.

3. Be curious about who’s not in the room.

“If you’re in a moment where you’re making a decision or changing plans that might impact other people, look around the room and see who’s not represented.” — Lauren Collins

This is a great first step toward building a more inclusive work culture. Ask who might be impacted by the work you’re doing and if they’re represented in the room. If they are present but silent, Frances says that’s a sign they’re not feeling included. How might you help them feel safe to speak up?

4. Soft skills are your superpower.

“Soft skills are not recognized and rewarded as much as they could be in business.” — Lauren Collins

The difference between leaders who stand the test of time and those who don’t is a person’s ability to demonstrate resilience, listening, authenticity, logic, empathy, vulnerability, and humility, among other skills.

5. Distraction kills empathy.

“Offer your attention when you’re in the presence of others.” — Frances Frei

The more we can offer our attention, the more opportunity we have to build empathy, Frances says. One easy thing you can do is to turn phones and technology distractions off during meetings. While it’s tempting to multitask, if we offer someone our distraction, we reveal we’re not interested in their trust.

6. To actively listen, first make space for everyone to speak.

“Starting with listening and making space for others before you lean into the conversation is really important for leaders.” — Lauren Collins

Some people might not feel comfortable speaking in front of a group. As a leader, it’s your role to make space for everyone to participate and show up as their authentic selves.

Try asking “Can you articulate an alternate point of view?” to widen the space for people to bring up different perspectives. Count to 10 before moving on so that people who need more time to process information can respond. Gather answers anonymously, and start or pause your meeting with a moment of heads down time. And finally, take note of who isn’t speaking. In your next meeting, reference an idea or helpful insight that person shared with you to show you value their contributions.

The full article is available here.

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This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.