rural areas – Social Enterprise Development in the Baltic Sea Region

THE RURAL SOCIAL ENTERPRISE GUIDEBOOK OF GOOD PRACTICE: Experience from Estonia, Finland, Germany, Romania and Scotland

THE FOLLOWING GUIDEBOOK MATERIAL WILL HELP AND SUPPORT YOU IN CREATING AND DEVELOPING COMMUNITY-BASED SOCIAL ENTERPRISES:

to estimate the benefits and challenges of community-based social enterprise
to find new ideas for developing your own community-based social enterprise
with practical guidelines and methods to establish your community-based social enterprise
to avoid the main pitfalls in establishing a community-based social enterprise
to assist those already involved in community based social enterprise to build knowledge and improve practice

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This was just one of educaitonal outcomes of the Visenet project. Here is some background information about the project:

As many countries rural areas are facing the same contemporary societal challenges, such as a tightening economy and diminishing local services, there is a need to find new tools for rural communities to cope with the future. One possible solution is the development of locally based social enterprise (SE). Social entrepreneurship can be defined as entrepreneurship that has a strong social goal where profits are reinvested back into the local community. The concept is, however, relatively novel in rural development across much of Europe. There is much local potential, embedded knowledge and skill in rural communities to improve local service provision and employment, but the people usually do not recognize this or know how to make full use of it. This is why there is a need to raise the capacity of local people to better address the community potential and needs by increasing their knowledge and skills of community activation, partnerships and networking, business thinking and recognizing the social impacts of social entrepreneurship in local communities.

DOWNLOAD GUIDEBOOK HERE.

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.

Educational Materials | English | Library

Social Enterprises in Rural Areas A Comparative Study of the Baltic States

This article provides a cross-case analysis of rural social enterprises from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Social enterprises seek to produce goods and services with a social or environmental purpose, and they pursue the general interest of local communities, people and/or social groups. The orientation towards the public good does not imply that social enterprises do not undertake strategies to achieve economic and financial efficiency; on the contrary, they must constantly create economic value to guarantee their survival over time. The successful operation of rural social enterprises is highly dependent on their relationships with their stakeholders. Many interest groups can indeed be involved in social enterprises; they can be divided into external stakeholders and internal stakeholders. Rural emigration and migration to cities is a major issue in the three countries, following the economic and social changes of the 1990s.

Successful Business Models

Urvaste Village Society – a promoter of traditional food in Estonia

Urvaste Village Society is a NGO located in a small village in South Estonia. The goal of the social enterprise Urvaste Village Society is to ensuring a good living and working environment for local residents in local community. Urvaste Village Movement started to produce a finely milled flour mixture (the Kama). The Kama is traditionally a mixture of roasted barley, rye, oat and pea flour. The oat flour may be completely replaced by wheat flour, or kibbled black beans may be added to the mixture. The Kama considered to be one Estonian traditional food.

Urvaste Village Society started in 2010. Nowadays they are producing an ecologically clean Kama and selling it successfully all around Estonia.

This field of action is one of many others to Urvaste Village Society. In the development plans of the nearest years are promoting the chocolate manufacturing in the village, developing the catering service, etc.

Business model

Offer: traditional Kama mixture with many different tastes

Customer segments: eco-friendly people, families with kids, tourists, urban inhabitants, enterprises, the public at large

Customer relationship: personal; impersonal

Key activities: developing the network of farmers; product development and design; packaging; marketing

Key recourses: network of farmers, production and storage facilities, kitchen appliances, people

Cost structure: primary goods, energy, room maintenance, maintenance and repair of equipment, costs on the package, people

Revenue streams: product (the Kama); degustation; workshops; catering

Impact measurement: number of products; number of community members involved into to production and selling process; number of farmers cooperating with the NGO; number of customers; number of regular customers; number of orders; number of business clients; local economic growth; created work places.

Educational Materials | English

Smart villages – a new way providing services in rural areas

European Network for Rural Development published a material about Smart Villages in May 2018. There is a full overview about the concept of Smart Villages, the meaning and importance of the concept. Community-lead actions are responding directly to local needs and opportunities and can be fully innovative. Social enterprises in rural areas with a high level of social capital can be pioneers of social innovation. Social innovation models in rural services are provides in the material.

The full publication is available in English: https://enrd.ec.europa.eu/sites/enrd/files/enrd_publications/publi-enrd-rr-26-2018-en.pdf.

Support for SocEnts

Kodukant, the Estonian Village Movement

Kodukant, the Estonian Village Movement is an association of non-governmental organizations, structured at three levels – village, county and national. Kodukant was set up officially in October 1997 and now has about 5,000 members. Kodukant embodies the spirit and values of the villages and is driven by a passion to retain rural life and traditions. Kodukant’s aims are to give technical advice; to promote networking and communication; to arrange training and capacity building; to act as advocate for rural communities; to support local initiatives; and to foster co-operation at all levels.

Kodukant is the most important promoter of the Smart Village concept in Estonia. Kodukant is supporting the social entrepreneurship in rural areas by consulting, training programs, development of teaching materials, etc.

For future information: https://kodukant.ee/.

Blog

Smart Villages – a new approach for developing rural communities

Smart Village is a new concept in the field of EU policies. ‘Smart and Competitive Rural Areas’ is one of the broad themes of the European Network for Rural Development (ENRD) in the 2014-2020 programming period. Smart Villages is one of the sub-themes of the EU Rural Development policy’s.

Smart Villages are “rural areas and communities which build on their existing strengths and assets as well as on developing new opportunities”, where “traditional and new networks and services are enhanced by means of digital, telecommunication technologies, innovations and the better use of knowledge” (by European Comission). That means rural communities taking the initiative to find practical solutions to challenges and make the most of new opportunities. ’Smart’ means also thinking for yourself, building new forms of cooperation beyond the village itself. Most of these coopertions and alliances are social entreprises at the moment as well as in the nearest future.

Watch a video about Smart Villages (with Estonian subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=114&v=iAVilTmxXl0.

Blog | English | Library | Russian | Successful Business Models

CoccoBello – Honey from Russian village

Cocco Bello produces organic creamed honey in a small village in the Ural mountains (Russia), where locals cultivate bees and hand-pick wild berries. Cocco Bello has won the Social Impact Award (Russia) for the project of revival of the small village and the great advocacy for social entrepreneurship.

The project contributes to developing the community Malyi Turish that is located 1500 km away from Moscow. The project already provides employment for more than 50 villagers, has built a playground for children and started a project to build a central water supply as well as to create a tourist site in Malyi Turish. In 2017 several volunteers from Europe and Africa have participated in the social camp in Turish.

Cocco Bello’s founder, Guzel Sanzhapova, promotes her shop through friends and locals. She often tells the story of her beekeeper-father and how he has provided employment for almost the entire village. She uses social networks and crowdfunding site Boomstarter to explain the humanitarian importance of local businesses.

Cocco Bello run one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns in Russia, it has three rounds and collects almost twice than needed. In 2015 Lipton has granted Cocco Bello as a winner of Lipton Goodstarter platform.

More information in English is here, in Russian – here

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