The Social Economy Supporting Center of Wester Subregion of Silesia Voivodeship (south of Poland) lead by Association CRIS in a partnership with Municipality of The City Zory, The City Jastrzebie Zdrój and The Administrative District of Wodzisław will support 6 local initatives starting their adventure with social entrepreneurship.

In March 2016 The Social Economy Supporting Center have launched an open call for proposals to find interesing and promising ideas for social bussiness. What is important to mention launching of the call for proposal was preceded by promotion campaine and local animation activities.

Experienced animators was visiting local municipalities and non-governmental ogranizations, making a research about social services that are needed in the region, if there are any institutions providing those services and what is the quality of offered services. Other important element was measuring the potencial of social economy sector in the region and level of knowlegde among public officers in the topic of social enterprises.

During few month of this work animators, advisors and social economy specialists were focused on convincing public administration to trust in social economy, perceive a social enterprise not only as a provider of services or producer of goods but also as a tool for fighting with social exclusion. Second big challenge was convincing third sector to a business activities.

Fortunatelly all long month of work proved to be effective and in the beginning of April 2016 The Social Economy Supporting Center of Wester Subregion of Silesia Voivodeship signed a contracts for long term support with 6 initiative groups which are interested in creating social enterprises which should provide a working places for at least 36 people who are in hight risk of social exclusion.

What is interesting 4 initatives were proposed by partnerships, 2 of them is a partnership between Local Municipality and NGO and 2 is a partnership of NGOs. Other 2 initatives are individual idea of already existing NGOs.

Now all groups will take part in a training courses, advisory services and bussiness coaching which will prepare them to creat a sustainable and professional social entreprises. Let’s keep fingers crossed for their success!

Anna Pomykoł – animator in The Social Economy Supporting Center.