CITIZENS-COOP (support citizens to take responsibility by founding social-citizen-based cooperative societies)
About the organisation:
SPES (Latin word for “hope”) Future Academy is a (non-party / non-profit) adult educational centre and is located in a rural, disadvantaged area in Upper Austria. SPES works here since 30 years on the main topic regional development and "quality of life" in several national / international projects. SPES activities are aiming to the benefit of today’s and future generations.
Website of the organization: www.spes.co.at
About the project:
Title: CITIZENS-COOP
Current State: It is often not easy for small rural municipalities to maintain infrastructure and systems that provide for peoples' basic needs. This leads to a lack of services like local supply, caring/nursing services, mobility, energy, education etc.
Idea: This project wants to motivate and support citizens to take responsibility by founding social-citizen-based cooperative societies.
Steps:
1) Researching the different national situations for social/citizens-cooperatives.
2) Gathering the opinions of citizens on different aspects and fields of work for social/citizens-cooperatives. Motivating and activating them to act jointly.
3) Visiting good or best practice in all partnering countries of social/citizens-based cooperatives.
4) Developing and testing a model process for citizens who want to found new initiatives or engage themselves respectively in such initiatives.
5) Organizing a public conference to reflect together with experts on the current research on this topic and the European dimension.
6) Focus on a relevant topic the citizens choose (2) and founding a social/citizens-cooperatives in each partner country to solve this topic.
7) Cooperative European network. Founding a European Cooperative Society.
Role of the partner organization in the project:
1) Knowledge and experience in citizen’s participation.
2) Knowledge of local best practices regarding social/citizen cooperatives.
3) Willingness to start and accompany a process to find relevant citizenship issues, including founding local social/citizen-cooperatives.
More information can be found in the attachment.
INSTITUTION | SPES Future Academy GmbH |
TYPE OF INSTITUTION | Non-profit association |
CONTACT NAME | Bernhard Zehetgruber |
CONTACT E-MAIL | zehetgruber@spes.co.at |
COUNTRY | Austria |
NAME OF THE PROGRAMME | Europe for Citizens / Civil society projects |
PROJECT TOPIC | CITIZENS-COOP (support citizens to take responsibility by founding social-citizen-based cooperative societies) |
WORKING LANGUAGE | EN, DE |
EXPIRATION DATE | 01.03.2018. |