To promote the development of innovative social schemes based on the cooperation among Social and Solidarity Economy actors and public administrations to enhance the social and labour inclusion of vulnerable groups in our societies.
Context
The financial crisis in Europe, as well as the unstable financial and political situation in many Mediterranean Partner Countries, has made apparent that new and credible alternatives to the mainstream economy are needed. These transformations in the economy and the society have brought increased attention to the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE)* actors that have been capable of helping to turn the challenges into opportunities. Nevertheless, in order to make efficient the SSE initiatives, effective collaboration with public authorities is fundamental.
*The expression social and solidarity economy (SSE) refers to a broad range of organisations that have explicit economic and social objectives as well as involve varying forms of co-operative, associative and solidarity relations. They include, for example, NGOs, cooperatives, mutual societies, foundations, social enterprises, fair trade organizations or other similar companies and organisations.
Objectives
- To enhance access to employment and social inclusion services and initiatives for vulnerable groups in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Greece and Italy.
- To design a framework of new social pilot schemes to support social economy actors working in the field in better collaborating with the public administrations.
- To develop a virtual multilingual interactive space to enrich the interaction between social economy actors and public administrations.
Activities
- Analysis and research of best practices about social schemesinitiatives to promote employment of vulnerable populations, leading to the development of MoreThanAJob framework of social schemes.
- Development of MoreThanAJob online portal – an online multilingual structured database and interactive space to foster dialogue and cooperation between social economy actors and public administrations for the development and delivery of services supporting the social and labour inclusion of vulnerable groups.
- Training activities and seminars addressed to social economy actors and public administrations to foster their capacities and raise their awareness on themes such as shared administration, co-programming and co-design of welfare initiatives.
- Financial support to local initiatives to strengthen the impact and to further support the social and employment inclusion in the territory.
Impact
- 18 professionals working in the field of social and labour inclusion increased their capacities and awareness on how to support local actions in improving the welfare services’ offer.
- +700 social economy actors participated to local training activities on how to support territorial welfare services.
- +150 representatives of public administrations were trained on how to collaborate more effectively with social economy actors.
- 10 agreements signed between social economy actors and public administrations for the development of initiatives supporting social and labour inclusion of vulnerable groups.
- 10 local initiatives sub-granted benefitting almost 3.000 people, in particular vulnerable ones, by enhancing their social and labour inclusionMoreThanAJob.
Resources
Partners
- An-Najah National University – ANNU (Palestina, coordinator)
- Nablus chamber of commerce and industry – NCCI (Palestina)
- Mutah University – MUTAH (Giordania)
- Business Consultancy and Training Services – BCTS (Libano)
- CESIE (Italia)
- Eurotraining Educational Organization SA – EUROTRAINING (Grecia)
