Blog Articles

It is well-known that the social economy and social enterprises represent a business model that focuses on people’s skills and abilities instead of their weaknesses to improve the social skills and employability of people who otherwise might struggle to find a job.

To illustrate this, with our members we have developed three case studies that are available on our website. Two of these examples concern social enterprises working in the tourism sector.

The first one is Le Mat, an organisation that has developed practical knowledge of how to set up and manage “type B” social cooperatives in the tourism sector. Type B social cooperatives contribute to the social and professional integration of disadvantaged people, including people with physical and mental disabilities, people with drug or alcohol addictions, or former prisoners. The first Le Mat Hotel was the Hotel Tritone in Trieste that was launched in 1985 by a group of young unemployed people and people suffering from social exclusion who wanted to start their own activity. They found a poorly-performing hotel, which was a property belonging to a local bank that had been managed for the last forty years by a man who now wished to retire. When Le Mat collaborators started their mission, they were first told that former prisoners and people with mental health problems or drug addiction were not able to become entrepreneurs or members of cooperatives because they were judged as unable to make appropriate decisions. The legal framework has now evolved in Italy, and disadvantaged people may set up their own businesses. However, many battles still have to be fought all over Europe for the rights of people to take control of their own destiny. Le Mat also helps existing structures to revitalise their business by working on the quality of the services provided, their identity, and their branding. In 2009 Le Mat opened the Hotel Göteborg in Sweden. Le Mat has established itself in Sweden, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, the United Kingdom and Poland, and would like to raise its visibility and open another hotel in Brussels.

The second example is Magdas, a social business hotel run by refugees accompanied by experienced staff in Vienna. The initiative was launched by Caritas Vienna and based on the idea that a hotel could easily become an engaging and motivating project that could bring together people with very different cultural, professional and social backgrounds. Magdas wants to develop a Magdas Social Franchise to facilitate the creation of other Madgas Hotels run by refugees throughout the EU. You can read more about this case here.

The last case concerns two projects developed by El Cerezo, a non-profit organisation based in Alicante (Spain): Insertadix del Mediterraneo, a work integration social enterprise, and Aromas y Colores VI, a training service to improve disadvantaged people’s employability. They were introduced in a context of economic crisis, high levels of poverty, extremely high unemployment rates, and digital and gender gaps that impede the development of an inclusive economy. In the region of Alicante, there is also a lack of adequate resources to support youths and older people experiencing long-term unemployment. Insertadix focuses on empowering users by developing personalised pathways that combine training with on-the-job support and supervision. The objective of Aromas y Colores VI is to create training, employment and personal development opportunities adapted to the current economic reality of the rural region in which the service is active. An important achievement of El Cerezo was the signing of an agreement with associations of small- and medium-sized enterprises in Villena and La Comarca.

It is encouraging to see that more and more actors are looking to the social economy and social enterprises as a means to fight social and economic exclusion. One such actor is the SERCo network, which is running a project aimed at improving social and economic inclusion of Roma communities by applying the concept of the social economy as an innovative solution to reduce the risk of poverty and to enhance entrepreneurship. The project’s main objective is to streamline the creation of Roma social entrepreneurship in the European Commission’s national Roma integration strategies, which aim to achieve progress in the areas of education, employment, health care and housing.