Taking into account the necessity of tackling social challenges social entrepreneurship (SE) has been recognized as a powerful tool to engage people and solve a lot of issues. However, a lone fighter is never enough, so the network building is the key to the success of social enterprises on a country, regional or international level. Social entrepreneurship in some European countries is still weak and needs the special effort of promotion, legal support, financial investments, networking or simply more information on opportunities and effective management to make an impact and Baltic Sea region is not an exception.
One of the support instruments run by Baltic Sea region countries’ NGO and social enterprise network is www.socialenterprisebsr.net online platform that gathers information about social entrepreneurship practices, development opportunities, researches and events connected to SE, as well as contains the database of social enterprises to collaborate with. It was created in terms of Erasmus+ project “Social entrepreneurship development in the Baltic Sea region (SEBS)” in 2014 and since then has accumulated some knowledge on the topic.
At the end of 2017 the new project of NGOs and social enterprises from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Poland and Denmark has been launched as continuation of SEBS project in order to provide more qualitative support for social entrepreneurship network in Baltic Sea region for the next two and a half years, adding new partner countries and organizations to the partnership. The title of the new project is “Improvement of the social entrepreneurship networking and educational possibilities in the Baltic Sea region” and its main objective is to continue development and widening of new network and share best practices by promotion, education, advocacy and research about social entrepreneurship within Baltic Sea region countries. The project will also help to improve the performance and efficiency of existing and new startups in the field of social economy.
Project partners involved:
Social Innovation centre (Latvia),
Sociale Entreprenører i Danmark (Denmark),
Stowarzyszenie “Baltycki Instytut Spraw Europejskich i Regionalnych” (BISER) (Poland),
Kasvuhuone – Growth Room Cooperative (Finland),
Kveikja (Iceland),
Eesti Külaliikumine Kodukant (Estonia),
Socialiniu investiciju fondas (Lithuania).
The expected results of the project will be:
The project has been started on 1.12.2017 and will last until 31.05.2020.
The content of this publication is sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.
