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.