The SEEING Project started in September 2012 and has since then developed the following

results that you can find on our website:

 A state of the art report, providing:

• an overview of the different instruments in Denmark, UK and Belgium that support social

economy enterprises.

• an overview of the European context in relation to policies, commitments and programmes.

 3 guiding templates to support strategy development and implementation on a local

level.

1. Strategies, local co-operation & networks – to assist local authorities to develop a local

strategy on how to use social economy enterprises as a means to create employment, social

inclusion, innovation and economic growth.

2. Advice, counseling & training – to assist local business development agencies to plan and develop local business development initiatives such as entrepreneurial advice, financial advice and concrete training focusing especially on social economy entrepreneurs.

3. Economic models & financing schemes – to assist local authorities on how to get an overview of or / and establish a local funding opportunities for social economy entrepreneurs.

You can find the state of the art report here

Local experiences

Since May 2013, the three participating local authorities have worked actively with the templates and based on this, have  launched local development processes, where new local strategies for social economy and/or corporate social responsibility are being developed and local support activities are being implemented.

The local partnerships have reported good experiences of working with the templates and as such,  it is considered that the intention of the templates; namely to assist local authorities to focus and structure their way of working strategically within the topic area, is being fulfilled.

As Mette Nielsen from Municipality of Kolding explains; “By following the different steps in the template we encountered barriers that forced us to think differently compared to the old strategy. The SEEING project has had lot of positive side effects. It has provided the Municipality with many new contacts on both national, regional and local level which havehelped us to approach the challenges from different angles that before”

The partners from Devon have also experienced positive effects from the work with the SEEING project; “We have used the strategy template to launch the development of a Devon County Council Social Enterprise Strategy. We consider the template be very comprehensive with only one or two potential changes being recommended.  Using the template has helped us to build up a structure for the strategy and propose a concrete workplan”. Angela King, Devon County Council.

What comes next?

Based on the local experiences from working with the templates, the partners in the SEEING project are now working on fine-tuning them, together with  the development of good practice descriptions on how the templates have been used and  concrete examples of results, such as strategy examples and training material.

All the results from the project will be available on the SEEING website by the end of the project in spring 2014.