Transnational transfer workshop Italy

The tandem partner of Piedmont met, through online conferences, four good practices from Germany and Croatia.

Specifically:

• Centre of Excellence on Social Innovation  (Germany) is Center mapping  the service providers and the special demands in their area. They run a scouting activity on innovative solutions outside their region.They organise events and workshops in communities to favour the development of new ideas and the emergence of the demand.
• Kulturhanse is a startup program for organisations that want to start a lab or an innovation center in rural areas. All of the organisations aim to impact their town or region.
•  SMEs and Start-ups loans is a revolving fund provinding loans at a below-market rate of interest to Smes and Start up not financed and rejeted by the banks.
•  Micro Loan for SEs provides microcredit  to SE between 5.000 and  25.000 EUR and provide additional services in combination with the loan.

The discussion was very interesting and highlighted many aspects related to the to possible transferability to the Piedmont context.

Many Piedmontese social enterprises   face difficulties in accessing to credit and the topic of reducing  financing barriers  and providing innovative financial  instruments and additional services is thus relevant for Piemonte Region.