SEMPRE – Social Innovation in Rural Areas
Outward migration and economic downturn adversely affect the provision of service infrastructure and quality of life in many of the Baltic Sea region’s rural areas. To counteract this downward spiral, SEMPRE enables social service providers to test empowerment tools and co-create new services in rural areas.
Ensuring social service provision in fields such as education, health and mobility has become a growing challenge in rural areas of the Baltic Sea region, affecting in particular economically disadvantaged people such as migrants, elderly, disabled and long-term unemployed. Being increasingly excluded from social, cultural and economic activities, SEMPRE ensures their inclusion by adopting an empowerment approach. On the other hand, the project also addresses social services providers to whom the benefits of such an empowerment shall be demonstrated and explained in the project.
The project partners create networks at the local, regional and transnational level in order to identify suitable empowerment approaches in a joint endeavour. The aim of the project is to help social service providers and disadvantaged groups to identify gaps and needs in the social service system. Such kind of initiatives are promoted in the form of “micro projects” and supported by consulting services with a low-level threshold, activating measures as well as access to financing opportunities. At the same time, the micro projects shall demonstrate how social innovation can strengthen the economic dynamic and attractiveness of rural areas.
