On Wednesday 13 September, the third workshop of the European Social Economy Project HUB on the Horizon Programme took place at the Cottino Social Impact Campus. The meeting followed the previous workshops held in June and July, which focused respectively on the Erasmus+ Programme and the LIFE Programme.

The European Social Economy Project HUB is an initiative launched in collaboration with Weco Impresa Sociale thanks to the contribution of the Turin Chamber of Commerce and the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation, which aims to seize the European Union’s financial opportunities on the topic of social impact, enhancing the ecosystem’s competences in the field of europlanning according to a peer-to-peer learning mechanism.

A total of 21 organisations from the IST ecosystem took part in the workshop, with a total of 27 participants. The workshop opened with greetings from Torino Social Impact and Weco Impresa Sociale. During the first part of the morning, the Politecnico di Torino, represented by Dr. Laura Fulci and Dr. Antonella Castellani, from the Research, Enterprise Relations and Innovation Directorate, provided participants with useful tips to introduce them to the Horizon programme.

This was followed by the intervention of two partners of Torino Social Impact: Itinerari Paralleli, with the contribution of Sergio Galasso, and Planet Smart City, with the contribution of Barbara Melis and Martina De Gallo: both partners shared with the participants their organisation’s European planning strategy, providing suggestions, aspects to be paid attention to and practical advice for drafting a project proposal.

During the second part of the morning, the organisations worked side by side, divided into working groups, to experiment the first steps in the development of a project proposal.

Through real “learning in the field”, the work was supported by the experience of Weco Impresa Sociale, which guided and facilitated the workshop. The groups focused on some calls in Cluster 2 (Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society) and Cluster 6 (Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment),

Of particular interest for the ecosystem is the call ‘The role of social economy in addressing social exclusion, providing quality jobs and greater sustainability‘, which will open in October 2023.

In this first phase, the working groups mapped possible local and European partners, identified needs and objectives and set up an initial project proposal, sharing their work with the participants at the end of the day.