Mechanism for Enhancement of Synergy and Sustainability among Enterprises
The idea of working together on the improvement of the regional development policies for the economic and qualitative growth of the social entrepreneurship has started within Interreg IVC PEOPLE project that has identified Agency for the Sustainability of Social Enterprise (Veneto) and Hampshire School for Social Entrepreneurs as good practices. Both institutions have the aim of improving the social entrepreneurship facilitating coordination and cooperation between Social Enterprises -SE-, public authorities and companies at local level.
Many initiatives in this sector have been conducted in the past, but in a more isolated way, mostly on local and regional level. The MESSE partnership has identified the need for joint action and exchange of experiences in a partnership with different strengths and needs so they could all actively learn from each other.

The overall objective and the main aim of the Project MESSE is to improve the effectiveness of regional development policies
for the economic and qualitative growth of social entrepreneurship in Europe. The exchange, sharing and transfer of policy experience, knowledge and good practices will contribute to achieving this objective.

The social entrepreneurship (the 3rd sector) is defined as the fastest growing force in the Old Member States, important because of its strong impact on the growth of regional economy and because of its Social Return On Investment -SROI-, a monetary value of social, community and environmental impacts.
New Member States demonstrate clear interest for the development of the sector,  but the concept is still not clarified and legislative framework should come after the assessment of the existing experiences.

The partnership covers wide EU area: it is made of 9 partners coming from 9 different regions, 9 different ""new and old"" Memeber States (IT, EL, ES, RO, HU, BG, SE, DE, UK), all local, regional, national authorities and opinion leaders with strong influence
on their policy makers.
The core activities of the project are divided in three parts: 
1. Interregional analysis of the sector;
2. Identification of existing good practices for support of synergies between SE, companies and public authorities (such as structures, support services, legislative and tax instruments); 
3. Interregional study visits and focus groups as catalyst for increased regional competitiveness. 
A very limited part of the project consists of a pilot action – experimentation of a MESSE mentoring system introduced by the partnership, through the joint MESSE Net Internet portal.

The main result of the project will be improved policy making processes by adopting evidence-based making, the creation of MESSE network for long term collaboration among the regions involved, and increased knowledge about the sector among key stakeholders. The project will also result in increased number of support services for enterprises and tailor made solutions for the third sector.