Thursday, April 27, 2017
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Friday, February 24, 2017
Social enterprises in rural Romania
Social enterprises in rural Romania
At a first glance the phrase ‘social economy’ seems a contradiction. The economy, as we know it, is profit and consumption oriented. And the social dimension, if any, is not necessarily obvious.
Actually, this sector is a pillar of European economy, accounting for roughly 10% of the GDP. More than 11 million workers, about 4.5% of the EU’s active population, have jobs in the social economy and a European Parliament resolution issued in November 2009 encourages the development of social enterprises both as models for economic growth and as inter-community assistance. Elisabeta Varga, a consultant in the NESst foundation, which provides consultancy to various social enterprises, gives us a detailed description of social economy.
Elisabeta Varga: “It has developed in response to the concrete needs of communities, and has come up with solutions to social issues, which are not covered by the public and private sectors. The objectives of social economy are the creation of new jobs and getting citizens more involved in community affairs. We can define it more clearly in opposition with the market economy, whose main aim is to make profit. As opposed to it, the social economy is designed to improve standards of living and foster new opportunities for the disadvantaged.”
The concept of social economy is not strange to the Romanians either. It was operational back in the time of the communist dictatorship as manufacture cooperatives.
Here is Dumitru Fornea, member of the European Economic and Social Committee: “Social economy is not a new concept, neither for Europeans in general, or Romanians in particular. Here, though, it took other forms. It started with the concept of ‘cooperation’ through cooperatives. Here, however, cooperatives failed because the communist state took control over this form of voluntary association. In the West, there have been forms that replaced these cooperatives, such as associations of workers in Spain and various types of foundations, which today are very active in Europe, and even in Romania. Social economy wants to capitalize on human resources to a maximum extent, focusing mostly on people, not on profit.”
Marred by the communist period, social economy in Romania had difficulties after 1990. In spite of this, in 2009, the social economy employed 3.3% of all workers in Romania. By 2011 it became an important sector of economic and social life, with mostly NGOs active. In 2009, 69% of active entities in the social economy were created by various associations and foundations, with the rest of 31% being the property of cooperatives.
Elisabeta Varga gave us examples of social enterprises in Romania. She said that most of them could be found in the countryside: “One of them is an association called ‘Village Life’, set up by a group of young people who used to work in various corporations, but later got back to the values of the village they want to promote. Their social enterprise deals with rural tourism. They want to promote this area, and for this they work with various households in the countryside which host tourists, showing them village life and their daily activities. They show them houses and beautiful places, as well as fast disappearing traditions. Another example is that of a foundation in Salaj county, which, along with the local authorities, have set up a social enterprise that wants to create a tourist brand on Barcau Valley. The foundation supports small honey makers in the area.”
Since this is such an important sector for the EU, its institutions provide member states with several financing possibilities, as we found out from Dumitru Fornea: “In Romania, the European program POSDRU is meant to develop the social economy. They tried to provide support for the social economy between 2007 and 2013, and we hope for this financial support to continue in the next financial year. They tried to help social enterprises, but accessing these funds supposes a certain amount of experience and knowledge. That is why it is important to be an associate if you want to have success and access European funds.”
However, even though people are willing to get involved in a social enterprise, the access to money is not always easy. Here is Elisabeta Varga: “For small entrepreneurs, for small social enterprises of the kind we mentioned, accessing these funds is very difficult. In fact, these funds are inaccessible to them. Firstly because of the co-financing requirement, which is an amount that many entrepreneurs simply don’t have. Practically, everything stops here when it comes to accessing European funds of this nature.”
Improving access to financing was included in the 2011 ‘Initiative for Social Entrepreneurship’, which is an ample EU plan included in the EU 2020 Strategy. In spite of this, for social entrepreneurs across the country, European funds are still a rarity.
Credits:Christine Leşcu http://www.rri.ro/en_gb/social_enterprises_in_rural_romania-13365#
Greece: Social Kitchen - the Other Person
Athens, Greece - Konstantinos Polychronopoulos, 51 years old, is the founder of "Social Kitchen - the Other Person", a communal movement with a main goal of providing free food for all in need.
For 25 years, Polychronopoulos worked as a marketing and communications specialist. But in September 2009, he lost his job. Failing to find work for over two years, he was forced to move back into his mother's house. His mother was receiving $660 pension a month, of which she paid $341 towards rent, and the two struggled daily.
In December 2011, he was shocked by an incident at the local flea market involving two children fighting over discarded, spoiled food and the apathy of the passers-by.
Konstantinos Polychronopoulos - founder of Social Kitchen - The Other Person - delivered 500 food rations at the temporary refugee camp in the Pedion tou Areos [Dimitris Sideris / Al Jazeera] |
The very next day, he prepared sandwiches and handed them out to poor people scavenging for food... [continue to read]
Promoting cooperatives and the Social Economy in Greece
The first part of this report briefly summarize the challenges facing Greece as well as the existing cooperative and social economy context, both in terms of regulatory framework and of the reality on the ground. The second part tries to summarize some CICOPA network’s experience and expertise in different countries across the world, which appears to be particularly relevant to the Greek context today, such as business transfers to the employees of enterprises on the verge of closing down, the integration of vulnerable groups, social services to small children and the elderly, the rural economy, artisans’ groupings, tourism, economic organising among immigrants, multi-stakeholder and mixed forms of cooperatives. The third part describes the international coordinating experience of CICOPA itself, in running complex development projects, stimulating the setting up of national cooperative federations, elaborating world sectoral cooperative standards, as well as analysing and advising on a vast array of cooperative legislation. The fourth part provides a series of recommendations based on CICOPA’s own development experience on how to launch a social economy project grounded in the promotion of cooperatives in Greece in the near future.
Credits: Cecop http://www.cecop.coop
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
You E.S.S.E.N.T.I.A.L Ref: 2016-2- EL02ΚΑ105002588
This blog is an outcome of the training course You E.S.S.E.N.T.I.A.L, which stands for:
Young
Entrepreneurship
through
Solidarity and
Social
Economy in
Non- formal
Training with Intercultural
Approaches
Learning.
The
training course was organized by Greek Acting Youth an informal group of young people of Githeio - Greece, co-funded
by EU Commission under Erasmus+ programme through the Greek Youth and Lifelong Learning Foundation - INEDIVIM, under the action of KA1 learning mobility
of youth workers. The training course took place in Githeio from 15-21 December
2016 and gathered 35 people from 7 EU countries: Greece, Turkey, Italy,
Estonia, Sweden, Romania and UK.
It aims to map the social entrepreneurship opportunities in the countries part of this project and to continue the cooperation and networking between the participants. Moreover to assist development of youth workers,
young leaders and practitioners on social economy purposes, intercultural
dialogue and human rights. It presents contents of outcomes and results tailored
and produced by the prticipants on the needs of the local youth of Githeion. This was an exercise in
order to learn the participants about social economy, ventures and social
entrepreneurship. These outcomes can be selected and adapted by users.
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