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Meeting to summarize the Dragging project

On March 6, 2024, PCG Poland co-hosted the Dragging event with the Fundacja Inicjatyw Społeczno-Ekonomicznych.

During the meeting, Agnieszka Sokolnicka – project coordinator – talked about the project results:

• Database of business ideas
• Online course on entrepreneurship, which was created on the basis of the manual

During the workshop part, male and female participants in groups searched for solutions to social problems identified in their communities. A lot of creative ideas were born and a lot of opportunities to exchange experiences.

The event was an opportunity to meet people involved socially at different levels of social action: social welfare centers, labor office, local authorities, representatives and representatives of social economy entities, NGOs, academic centers. A truly networking meeting.

Participants of the meeting:

• Środowiskowy Dom Samopomocy w Nowym Dworze Mazowieckim
• OPS Grodzisk Mazowiecki
• Powiatowe Centrum Pomocy Rodzinie w Nowym Dworze Mazowieckim
• Stowarzyszenie na Rzecz Rozwoju Gminy Czosnów
• Fundacja “A kuku”
• Gmina Czosnów
• Ośrodek Pomocy Społecznej Dzielnicy Praga Południe m.st. Warszawy
• Skafander Stowarzyszenie Artystyczno-Społeczne
• Społeczny Instytut Ekologiczny
• SPÓŁDZIELNIA SOCJALNA NASIELSZCZANIE
• Powiatowy Urząd Pracy w Nowym Dworze Mazowieckim
• Warszawskie Centrum Pomocy Rodzinie
• Stowarzyszenie Kulturotwórcze Nie z tej Bajki
• Gmina Leoncin
• Urząd Miejski w Nasielsku
• Miejski Ośrodek Pomocy Społecznej w Nasielsku

Second multiplier event under project DRAGGING

New business opportunities are offered by the DRAGGING project of the Regional Development Agency with the Business Support Center for Small and Medium Enterprises (RDA BSC SMEs).

“The connection between the local administration and social organizations is becoming stronger with the help of the DRAGGING project, supporting entrepreneurship with the public administration,” said the executive director of RDA BSC SMEs Velizar Petrov, during the second multiplier event of the project. It was held on February 28, 2024 in front of over 40 representatives of regional and municipal administrations, public institutions, non-governmental organizations, regional centers of the social and solidarity economy under the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy, people at risk of exclusion.

The project activities and final products were presented:

• Report on the training needs of people at risk of exclusion;
• Report on entrepreneurship training courses at European Union level;
• Business Manual – curriculum for training persons at risk of social exclusion;
• Module 1: Introduction to agile business model design methodologies;
• Module 2: Business Strategy and Marketing Plan;
• Module 3: Personnel Management;
• Module 4: Public Procurement;
• Module 5: Finance.

For each module there is a questionnaire designed to check what has been learned.

13 November 2023
5^th Transnational Partners’ Meeting in Valencia, Spain

The consortium of the Dragging project had met this Wednesday in beautiful and sunny Spain. This time we were hosted in Incubadora Con Valores in Valencia. We had opportunity to talk about next steps in the project – the Business Ideas Platform as well as the Online Course for entrepreneurs especially those who intend to run the social businesses.

Partners divided responsibilities which are ahead of consortium on upcoming project’s phases.

19 June 2023
4^th Transnational Partners’ Meeting in Virginia, Ireland

The Dragging project, which we are implementing as part of the Erasmus+ program, is gaining momentum. From the conceptual and research phase, we move on to the implementation of pilot activities. The project partnership meeting in Virginia, a charming town in Ireland where one of The Rural Hub partners is based, was a great opportunity to make further arrangements.

As part of the project, we will:

• implement a mentoring program for eight business ideas in the field of social economy
• conduct training and mentoring for future entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs. After the holidays, we will start recruitment, so we will come back to you with an invitation;

A platform is also being created, which will be a base of ideas and a workspace for mentors and mentees, i.e. people who want to be entrepreneurs.

We hope that this form of popularizing the social economy will contribute not only to increasing the interest of future entrepreneurs, but also of public administration. The element of strengthening cooperation between social economy entities and local governments is the main objective of the Dragging project.

11-12 January 2023
3^rd Transnational Partners’ Meeting in Warsaw, Poland

For the third transnational meeting the Partners were invited to visit Warsaw (Poland).

The meeting focused on the progress of Business Ideas Marketplace development, including updates from conducting national focus groups with stakeholders.

We also designed the shape and functions of the IT Platform structure and different user roles allowing the visitors to exchange ideas, view the business ideas and engage in the mentoring process, of which draft was also presented during the meeting.

The working group atmosphere was also a chance to refine our tools for training needs analysis. The data collected will be a starting point for structuring the course contents in response to the identified knowledge gaps in our target groups.

On the second day we spent some time on conversations around dissemination activities and the most effective way of monitoring of all our efforts. After the meeting on the 1^st day, the hosts invited visiting partners to taste the Polish cuisine where the discussions continued in a friendly atmosphere.

16 December 2022
Participants of the European Economic Forum Lodzkie 2022 learn about DRAGGING

During the European Economic Forum Lodzkie 2022 our Polish Partner’s representative – Ewa Rogalska – took part in the discussion panel “Social entrepreneurs – (un)ordinary companies on the Łódź market” promoting the Dragging Project goals and current activities.

Thanks to this, we met the participants of our future activities and several organizations declared they are interested in cooperation with us on the project.

You can watch the transmission from the panel here (in Polish only):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-TTbrg2sZY

Learn more about the Forum: https://forum.lodzkie.pl/

The invited guests discussed the importance of social entrepreneurship for the Łódź and national economy.

The panel was carried out jointly by:

• Regional Center for Social Policy in Łódź
• PCG Poland,
• Center for Social Economy Support Centrum KLUCZ as part of the Committee for the Development of the Social Economy of the Łódź Voivodeship.

8 November 2022
Working Sessions with stakeholders held in Poland

In Poland, on November 4th and 7th, three focused group interview workshops were held – expert meetings with representatives of the project’s target groups:

• local government officials and representatives of public administration organizational units – online meeting
• representatives of third sector organizations (non-governmental organizations, social economy entities, foundations, cooperatives) – live meeting
• representatives of business, entrepreneurs, companies and business environment organizations – online meeting.

Altogether, 17 people were involved in the discussions.

The purpose of the meetings was not only to present the assumptions and goals of the DRAGGING project, but also to collect information supporting the creation of the Business Ideas Marketplace and to discuss good practices identified by the project team and those known to participants.

Main collected conclusions and reflections from the discussions in Poland:

• Social clauses are used by local government units definitely too rarely. It is estimated to be less than 3% of the value of public procurement in Poland.
• There is still an insufficient number of entities providing activation services for seniors and care services for dependent people, especially in rural areas.
• People with special needs require not only training, but often also the support of job coaches.
• People at risk of exclusion must be trained, not only in how to run a business, but above all how to start, where to go for support, bearing in mind that some people will not be able to do their own thing – social entrepreneurship should be supported.

The collected information will be deepened and included in the Marketplace of Business Ideas for the third sector and people interested in the development of new enterprises and organizations, developed jointly with the EU partners of the DRAGGING project.

We would like to thank all participants of our discussions for their time.

13-14 October 2022
2^nd Transnational Partners’ Meeting in Plovdiv, BG

The second transnational meeting within the DRAGGING project is behind us. This time we visited Plovdiv (Bulgaria) to discuss with our partners further actions to strengthen cooperation between local authorities and the third sector. We also planned for expert meetings that will be held by each partner in November and December 2022.

We discussed in detail the way to hold the meetings with representatives of local governments, the third sector and business, and we have refined the framework for focus group interviews that will allow us to collect data in a structured way.

Report from meetings with our stakeholders will be available soon on our website. After the meeting, our hosting partners from Bulgaria took us for an interesting evening walk around the city. We had the opportunity not only to see the remains of ancient buildings, but also to taste the local cuisine and get to know each other better.

Stakeholders mapping completed and workshops in preparation

During one of our recent regular check-in meetings we discussed our activities around stakeholders’ mapping and reach-out activities inviting different institutions from the project target groups to cooperate with us.

We listed experts, partners and entities from our countries interested in joint works on the Business Ideas Marketplace. Some of them already have some ideas to feed our platform of successful business models.

Now our works will focus on the Business Ideas Marketplace – the second Result of the DRAGGING project. This is an online marketplace where different business ideas and models will be catalogued and shared. The business ideas published on the marketplace will be informed and created through our workshops and interviews with local stakeholders.

During the online meeting we discussed the framework for the workshops to be held and the set of questions we would like to work around with our FGI’s participants. The workshops scenarios will be fine-tuned during our next partnership meeting in Bulgaria.

DRAGGING Project

DRAGGING Project is the result of cooperation of 5 partners from 4 European countries committed to address the financial crisis and the COVID crisis in the context of decreasing income of the third sector.

DRAGGING project partnership is glad to launch the new project website: www.draggingproject.eu

Through the web platform we will share all the steps and outputs of the 24-month-long pan-European Erasmus+ project, funded by the Spanish National Agency (Servicio Español para la Internacionalización de la Educación (SEPIE)), aiming at reducing the gap between local administrations and local social organisations in order to generate a bank of business opportunities to which these organisations may apply.

The project was launched, and the first partners’ hybrid meetings resulted in detailed concepts and frameworks being developed for a common understanding of the objectives and envisioned deliverables.

Expected impact of the project:

• To train professionals from social organisations to improve their relationship with the public administration and respond to the needs in terms of new public procurement policies.​
• To create effective working synergies that allow mutual knowledge and enable new financing tools that are more in line with the needs of social entities and that provide adequate services to the public administration ecosystem.​
• Job creation generated by entrepreneurial projects and participation of entrepreneurs in the design of social enterprises. ​
• Impact on Local Public Administration to become an ally in identifying future public procurement market niches.