In February, the Social Innovation Centre started participating in an exciting new Erasmus+ funded project RevitaLESE. RevitaLESE addresses a problematic gap in the training offer available to social economy organizations, which currently rarely includes ongoing support beyond the start-up phase.

The project aims to develop a comprehensive and valuable training model to revitalize and modernize long-established social economy organizations. A pilot version of this training model will be used to create a social economy network run by long-established social economy organizations themselves as an outreach platform with content demonstrating the value, impact and potential of the European social economy (podcasts, blogs, case studies). 

The social economy refers to a variety of businesses and organizational models, such as cooperatives, mutuals, associations, foundations, social enterprises, charities and other legal forms, and social economy organizations which are characterized by having both a social mission and an economic activity. The terms ‘social economy’ and ‘social enterprise’ can be used somewhat interchangeably, but in this project we use the term ‘social economy organizations’.

A key part of the project is to develop the capacity of social economy representative institutions in all partner countries to develop and support long-established social economy organizations and to create a replicable model that can be easily transferred and adapted across Europe. The training programme developed will thus be widely accessible so that long-established social economy organizations across Europe can receive assistance where there is currently little.  

PROJECT CARD

Duration: 1 February 2022 – 31 January 2024.

Goal: the project’s main objective is to highlight, engage with and help improve and revitalize the social mission and business model of long-established social economy organizations.

Partners: The Wheel (IR) / Act Grupa (HR) / Synthesis Center for Research and Education (CY)/ Social Innovation Centre (LV)/ Skills Zone (MLT)/ Knowl Social Enterprise for Education and Lifelong Learning (GR) and Dublin City University (DCU) (IR).

Follow RevitaLESE on Facebook and LinkedIn and see the first edition of the project newsletter here.

This publication has been prepared within the project REVITALESE no. 22021-1-IE01-KA220-VET-00003486. The opinions expressed therein are the responsibility of the author and do not reflect the official position of the European Commission.