objectives

The objectives of the project are:

1. To create a territorial map concerning:

existing social co-operatives and quality of services provided by them;
social areas with a serious lack of services and a high number of requests/needs which are not satisfied to also remove the obstacles which exist, and are principally related to the difficult relationship which exists between social companies and the market, and manifest in the form of: close downs, difficulties to obtaining credit and a strong presence of companies ‘assisted’ by the public sector;

2. To create awareness that a social company should have sufficiently high levels of
entrepreneurship to compete in the market place;

3. favour the development of social co-operatives capable in providing competitive services and costs, with efficient quality control and client satisfaction systems;

4. raise the quality and sustainability of existing social co-operatives with the creation of training and consultancy support initiatives able to provide the staff and/or mangers of these co-operatives with the specialist organisation and economic-company knowledge required for the efficient managers of social companies within the social areas established during the research phase;

5. sustain the creation and start up of new social co-operatives which target the development of services offered to people and the improvement of the quality of life of disadvantaged groups in defined social areas;

6. favour the mainstreaming process foreseen, with an effect on the social/assistential and employment system in the Province of Ancona;

7. diffuse the project results and a model with the application of necessary corrective measures required by the different social and local economic characteristics other sub-regional and national areas;

8. diffuse the results in other sub-regional transnational areas which will allow the testing of reciprocal training models in places with different languages and cultures, with the final objective of reaching a joint model for the creation of social companies which can be applied in other countries which belong or will shortly belong to the European Union.

Results expected

Research on social cooperation in the province of Ancona which provides an analytical idea of social enterprises as regards: organisational models, training needs; definition of professional profiles; parameters concerning satisfaction of needs expressed in the area;

The re-qualification of human resources in a selected group of social enterprises already working in the area as regards organisational and managerial competencies and in particular regarding: spin-off procedures; implementation of EN ISO 9000 quality systems.

The creation of a network of people, working in the social cooperative sector to exchange best practices also on a transnational level.