Mentoring and community for eco-sustainable development
The challenge: fighting unemployment through self-entrepreneurship. UNIGE believes that entrepreneurship requires a change of mentality in a company's corporate culture. Businesses should look to socially responsible and resilient models for a sustainable economy focused on work. Community cooperatives are the prototype on which to build a cross-border network of self-entrepreneurship support services and promote their diffusion in the economic and social fabric of the blue and green cross-border priority chains (sustainable tourism, agri-environment, agri-food supply chain, energy and services). The idea is to create a hub for cooperative companies and encourage new employment opportunities in the local maritime sectors. The project aims to strengthen the development of community cooperatives through a network of new employment services. Its main result will be an ICT platform of standard cross-border employment services offering coaching and mentoring for the creation of blue and green community cooperatives augmented by a basic prototype model to support start-ups. The beneficiaries will be trade associations, training institutions, technical and professional centres and employment services that can offer a new model to young people and the unemployed. The project's cross-border joint development approach will share the specific and differentiated skills of the partnership. The innovation is the particular type of community cooperative, which is considered the most innovative and appropriate model for the development of services and local economies.