Search for European Projects

Mechanism for Enhancement of Synergy and Sustainability among Enterprises (MESSE)
Start date: Dec 31, 2011, End date: Dec 30, 2014 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The idea of working together on the improvement of the regional development policies for the economic and qualitative growth of the social entrepreneurship has started within Interreg IVC PEOPLE project that has identified Agency for the Sustainability of Social Enterprise (Veneto) and Hampshire School for Social Entrepreneurs as good practices. Both institutions have the aim of improving the social entrepreneurship facilitating coordination and cooperation between Social Enterprises -SE-, public authorities and companies at local level.Many initiatives in this sector have been conducted in the past, but in a more isolated way, mostly on local and regional level. The MESSE partnership has identified the need for joint action and exchange of experiences in a partnership with different strengths and needs so they could all actively learn from each other.The overall objective and the main aim of the Project MESSE is to improve the effectiveness of regional development policiesfor the economic and qualitative growth of social entrepreneurship in Europe. The exchange, sharing and transfer of policy experience, knowledge and good practices will contribute to achieving this objective.The social entrepreneurship (the 3rd sector) is defined as the fastest growing force in the Old Member States, important because of its strong impact on the growth of regional economy and because of its Social Return On Investment -SROI-, a monetary value of social, community and environmental impacts.New Member States demonstrate clear interest for the development of the sector, but the concept is still not clarified and legislative framework should come after the assessment of the existing experiences.The partnership covers wide EU area: it is made of 9 partners coming from 9 different regions, 9 different ""new and old"" Memeber States (IT, EL, ES, RO, HU, BG, SE, DE, UK), all local, regional, national authorities and opinion leaders with strong influenceon their policy makers.The core activities of the project are divided in three parts: 1. Interregional analysis of the sector;2. Identification of existing good practices for support of synergies between SE, companies and public authorities (such as structures, support services, legislative and tax instruments); 3. Interregional study visits and focus groups as catalyst for increased regional competitiveness. A very limited part of the project consists of a pilot action – experimentation of a MESSE mentoring system introduced by the partnership, through the joint MESSE Net Internet portal.The main result of the project will be improved policy making processes by adopting evidence-based making, the creation of MESSE network for long term collaboration among the regions involved, and increased knowledge about the sector among key stakeholders. The project will also result in increased number of support services for enterprises and tailor made solutions for the third sector. Achievements: The MESSE project kicked off in Venice on April 2012 with a two days meeting and a press conference organized by the lead partner, the Veneto Region. It appears very clear to all partners from the very beginning that the project is very important for several agreed reasons so the partnership easily started to discuss a common transnational methodology for the project management to be also applied for good practices identification and for the foreseen desk and on the spot research activities. In occasion of this first meeting, two very interesting presentation took place: the first one was about the Venetian Cooperative System main features and the other one dealt with CSR project carried out by the Veneto Region and Unioncamere Veneto in order to disseminate and encourage among enterprises corporate social responsibilitys values. The open debate was focus on the possibilities to make business companies more similar to social enterprises, in terms of social sustainability, promoting the SCR values. To emphasize the practical value of this project initiative, on April 12th, the attending partners has been actively involved in the first project Study Visit on the Venetian Territory. The host Lead Partner choose to show two interesting realities acting with success in the field of Social Economy : Consortium in Concert and the Consortium 100 Horizons. These two Consortia are made of several type B social cooperatives. These reality is becoming increasingly prominent in Veneto, rather, its becoming the most important reality in the region for what concerns the economic and job placement of disadvantaged people, if not from an economic perspective altogether. After actively attended the presentation of the mission of the two consortia, the partners were able to meet "field" operators of the member cooperatives, in most cases it was socially disadvantaged persons whose inclusion in social work has taken place following a philosophy innovative enterprise that focuses on the person. During the study visit it was also stressed that new Social Entrepreneurship models coming from European projects experiences represents concrete possibilities. This experiences has given a great impulse to the all group that started investigating the target regions producing their own Short Report on National Rules on Public Procurement in order to analyze the legal framework at national and regional level in relation to the instruments available to the Public Administrations and profit companies to support social enterprises in the public procurement procedures.
Up2Europe Ads

Coordinator

Details

  • 77.7%   1 237 011,70
  • 2007 - 2013 Interreg IVC
  • Project on KEEP Platform
Project Website

8 Partners Participants