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.
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