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Europe’s rural regions face social challenges, just like anywhere else. But remote populations rarely benefit from the public and private services available to towns and cities.
However, issues like unemployment and the brain drain of skilled workers are now being tackled by rural social enterprises. These organisations are creating a new kind of social support system, providing services that countryside communities would otherwise be unable to access.
The EU-funded RURINNO project has combined research and training to strengthen and support the work of such social enterprises. Specifically, it has developed a toolkit to help new rural social enterprises overcome six common hurdles.
‘The toolkit is important because it helps new rural social enterprises deal with challenges, such as ensuring financial sustainability and choosing the right legal form,’ says Ralph Richter, RURINNO project manager and senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space in Germany.
The toolkit draws from the experiences of 10 social entrepreneurs and social enterprise staff members – from Ireland, Greece, Austria and Poland – who took part in the RURINNO project.
These entrepreneurs collaborated with five researchers to form a consortium, enabling the group to study the sector from a range of perspectives.
Alongside the toolkit, they published a policy brief, making recommendations to policymakers about how to help the social economy develop in rural areas.
This research was the first of its kind. ‘This EU-funded project was among the first to shed light on rural social enterprises and question how they address rural challenges and how they innovate,’ says Richter.
The RURINNO project, which ended in March 2018, published its research findings in four journal articles and in the book ‘Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Rural Europe’, which will be published in spring 2019.
The consortium also trained the social entrepreneurs to develop their skills and make their enterprises more competitive. ‘The training enabled the social entrepreneurs to bring new ideas to their organisations,’ says Richter. ‘The collaborative research environment enabled out-of-the-box thinking.’
RURINNO received funding through the EU’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme..