The Foundation for Partnership and Civil Society Development
+RESILIENT – study visit to Barcelona and Zaragoza
Project team members of Foundation for Partnership and Civil Society Development made a study visit to Barcelona and Zaragoza in Spain from 12th until 14th of November 2018, during the project implementation of +RESILIENT - Mediterranean Open Resources for Social Innovation of Socialy ResponsIve Enterprises.
The day one started visiting the Barcelona Activa’s business incubator and employment facilities - the partner organization, also the meeting host. During the visit, they presented their economic innovation projects and financial tools, also mentioning the support of the City Government of Barcelona, supporting the social inovations by participating into the numerous projects. It was a great opportunity facing the project activities, which aim is to include as many citizens as possible in various educational supporting social programs.
Project partners also visited the start-up programmes of the Glories Business Incubator, which are supporting the fresh enterpreneurs, maintaining the Employment Department with mentoring services such as education, consulting and psyhological support.
It is necessary mentioning “zero waste” Fab lab Barcelona, that provides the citizens different free services using technology and digital fabrication such as 3D printers, shirt writing machines and multufunctional lasers. The next level improving service would be recicling the plastic materials, making new from the old ones.
The second study visit day continued visiting Cooperativa L'Olivera that employes people with disabilities, supporting them during the proces of integration by producing the quality wine and oil. The goal is also stimulating the agriculture development of Barcelona, because of the lack of the agricultural land that contained 30 percent of potential surface, and these days there is only 3 percent.
The next visiting point was the ECOS Group, a group of cooperative and solidarity economy organizations, that was founded during the financial crises period. The goal was to gather the companies so they could effectively minimize the expences. At the moment, ECOS Group is formed by the 18 organizations of that kind. In Barcelona, for example, there are 861 different cooperative and solidarity economy organizations.
At the third travel day, project team members visited Technological Institute of Aragon where was presented Aragon Open Data launched by The Regional Government of Aragon. Aragon Open Dana web platform gathers many different sorts of information that concernes the Region of Aragon.
It was possible to see the similar practice as the Tekop Nova Pula, which at the moment employes 29 people, from who there are 17 persons with disabilities. We also visited Mapiser and Arapack, the social economy example companies that are integrating persons with disabilities, so after the three year proces, they could succesfully go back to the labor market. During the proces, they are supervised by the qualified experts.
Study visit to Spain was the great opportunity for project stakeholders to see new ways and methods by fixing the challenges into the urban areas. There are numerous ideas that could be adjusted and implemented in our community, also improve the life quality of our citizens. We hope that the +Resilient implementation project will stimulate a new kind of social inovation, thank’s to the project stakeholders engaged into the implementation. It is also necessary notice the need for the open data resources. We have potential, all it takes to do is look around facing the new way of thinking, socially valuable and sustainable.
