Cross-border services to improve skills, stimulate networking, increase the network of community cooperatives in the cross-border area
The challenge of SE.MI.NARE. is to support community cooperatives in Italy and public interest cooperative enterprises (SCIC) in France, a recent and legally recognised form of self-employment. These cooperatives are established and go through a change to their cultural approach to move into business, where their exclusive way of doing business also covers social responsibility, stimulating the resilience of local communities, compared with the sole purpose of merely making a profit. The project aims to enhance the development of community cooperatives, through a network system of services made available to cooperatives in the maritime sector, representing an example of a sustainable economy. The project therefore sees community cooperatives as being the model on which to build a cross-border network of services to support self-employment and to help them spread in the economic, social and territorial fabric of the blue and green cross-border priority supply chains, such as sustainable tourism, agroecology, agri-food, services, etc. The project output will therefore be represented by a set of tools, such as coaching and tutoring, story-doing and story-sharing, training, business models and business plans, as well as marketing and advertising plans, which will be made available to cooperatives working in the sectors of the blue and green supply chains, and a basic support service for administrative and management matters. This is a cross-border joint development approach, systematising the specific and diversified skills of the project partners. Finally, this project is innovative given the type of beneficiaries, community cooperatives, which are considered the most innovative and suitable example for the development of sustainable local economies.