Intra-regional learning: Fostering Social Entrepreneurship in Malta, Estonia and Ireland

Over 40 social enterprise stakeholders from Malta, Ireland and Estonia participated in a successful online workshop hosted by Cork City Council (Ireland) recently, focused on supporting social entrepreneurship in a post-Covid19 reality. This event is part of the FOSO-POCO project a European project aimed at fostering Social Entrepreneurship ecosystems, and co-funded by the European Union’s COSME programme. The project is led by Malta Enterprise, with Cork City Council (Ireland) and Tartu City Government (Estonia) as partners.

Presentations on the day included a review of the Irish and, more specifically, the Cork social enterprise ecosystem, and various case-studies among others from Rethink Ireland, Metiheal Mara,

Cork Deaf Enterprises and Northside for Business. The key note speaker was Mikel Irujo Amezaga, Minister for Economic and Business Development in the Regional Government of Navarre in Spain and Rapporteur for the European Committee of the Regions. His presentation focused on the renowned role that social enterprises play in Navarre, Northern Spain.

Workshop organiser Mr Donal Guerin, from the Economic Development Section of Cork City Council, stated, “This workshop brought together practitioners in the field of social enterprise from across the EU. We learned that we face many of the same challenges arising from Covid-19, but there was agreement that social enterprises will play a major role in leading the recovery”.

The FOSO-POCO project focuses on creating better understanding of the conditions for social entrepreneurship by directly involving relevant actors and stakeholders in efforts to identify and address existing gaps in the support for social enterprises. Malta Enterprise encourages local stakeholders to share their views, ideas and concerns on local social entrepreneurship by joining the FOSO POCO project stakeholder meetings and workshops.

The next online workshop in this series, ‘Fostering Social Economic Ecosystems – the policy perspective’, will be organised by Malta Enterprise. It will focus on social enterprise policy, and various national and international key speakers will address the participants. There will be ample time for discussion. It will take place on 30th September, from 09.30 till 13.00 hrs, and will be free of charge.

For further information about this project, the stakeholder meetings or to register for the next online workshop kindly send an email to: euprojects@maltaenterprise.com.