SocialTech4EU
Introduction
The SocialTech for Europe for Resilient and Responsible Ecosystems, SocialTech4EU, is a two-year project that kicked off in September 2022 and is funded by the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) through the Joint Cluster Initiatives (EUROCLUSTERS) for Europe’s recovery (SMP-COSME-2021-CLUSTER).
More Information here.
Presentation of the project
Social economy organizations often face structural difficulties related to the access to new digital and green business models and their implication in the twin transition. Challenges are related to weak financial sustainability and access to finance, lack of skills and talent attraction capacity, low competitiveness on the market compared to traditional SMEs. These challenges hamper their potential to create more jobs and address societal challenges on a larger scale while inspiring systemic changes in the mainstream economy.
This project aims at strengthening the resilience and innovation capacity, competitiveness, and sustainability of social economy ecosystems and of start-ups and SMEs of the social economy, with a special focus on technology social ventures. The project will do this through providing them with support in the form of grants, vouchers and professional services. New digital and green business model enabled by new technologies are at the core of this project, as well as clusters’ support to agile forms of public-private partnerships and new forms of cooperation between private and public sectors within and across different value chains and territories, to accelerate the delivery of innovative impact solutions that would not be achieved otherwise.
This project is one of the 14 Industrial Ecosystems – linked to the EU industrial Strategy and is part of the Proximity and Social Economy Industrial Ecosystem. In September 2022, 30 Euroclusters have been launched to implement the EU Industrial Strategy. Euroclusters are cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary and trans-European strategic initiatives of industry clusters and other economic actors such as research organisations, companies, etc. Learn more and access the European Cluster Collaboration Platform here.
Projectpartners
Torino Social Impact , represented by Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini SRL SB
Fundatia Alaturi De Voi Romania, RO
Coompanion Örebro, SE
Silicon Vilstal gemeinnützige UG (haftungsbeschränkt), DE
Asociacion Investigacion, Desarrollo E Innovacion En Aragon, ES
Project activities
- Work Package 1 will focus on the project management and coordination
- Work Package 2 will focus on auditing and mapping. In this WP, the needs and challenges will be identified that are preventing SEs twin transitions and resilience and the social impact generated by the sector will be monitored. New collaboration models between European cluster organisations and other key actors will be built and the knowledge in the public sector and of public officials of social enterprises’ needs and characteristics is aimed to be improved, with the eye on more tailored policy design and policy making.
- Work Package 3 has a focus on inspiring, up-skilling and re-skilling. The aim is to create awareness among SEs on how new technological solutions could be used to increase effectiveness and efficiency of their service and business models, as well as for increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of their operating model for better inclusiveness. Moreover, up- and re-skilling will be fostered and the aim is to raise the skills and capacity of EU SE cluster managers.
- Work Package 4 will connect to innovate. Promising SEs will be identified and selected, both for innovation support in WP4 and acceleration after WP4. The selected social enterprises will exchange with other parties, resulting in new-to-firm products or services in the focused ecosystem. In this WP, internationalization actions will be supported.
- Work Package 5 will support the social enterprises in the uptaking and upscaling of innovation and will bring their innovative solutions to the market, will support social enterprises accessing new financing opportunities and will facilitate cooperation with international business partners (corporates, investors, procurers, etc).
- Work Package 6 focusses on communication & dissemination and will ensure synergies with other Eurocluster activities.
More information here.
News
Application for the Open Call for Training for SocialTech4EU is closed.
We received many great applications and are reviewing them at the moment.
The registry of stakeholder and providers for social economy is still open. More informtion here.
Meanwhile we are preparing the Social Impact Hackathon, which is part of the SocialTech4EU project happening
22. – 24. September 2023.
Contact
Silicon Vilstal gemeinnützige UG
(haftungsbeschränkt)
Hauptstr. 15
D-84144 Geisenhausen
CEO: Helmut Ramsauer