• Capacity building

INSPIRE

INSPIRE aims to advance social inclusion in rural areas in Europe by supporting access to high-quality social services by rural citizens.

INSPIRE aims to support the sustainable and inclusive development of European rural areas by promoting social well-being and inclusion of rural dwellers and groups in a vulnerable situation and enhancing governance frameworks. Therefore, the project will foster access to high-quality social services by rural citizens through a series of awareness-raising, capacity-building, and pilot deployment activities that focus on social entrepreneurship and improvement of social services in a set of 7 different pilot territories (e.g., coastal, rural, peri-urban, mountainous).

To reach this goals, the project provides a novel territorial typology of rural areas, sets up and operationalises seven “Smart Village labs”, and enhances governance frameworks and informed policy-making through E-Democracy and user-innovation techniques, to eventually deliver a dedicated Rural Social Inclusion Policy Dashboard. 

Aim 

The project objectives will be:  

  • To provide an understanding of what social inclusion is and its trends and challenges in rural areas through research that includes hard-to-reach populations.  
  • To map and benchmark (social) service policies, initiatives, and social economy models to assess their potential and limitations, informing policies through a “Services and Social Economy Atlas on Rural Empowerment”.
  • To enhance existing governance frameworks for social inclusion and social economy in rural areas, through Smart Village Labs.  
  • To co-develop, pilot and evaluate social economy solutions for social inclusion and better service access in rural areas.  

  • To provide policymakers with research tools and policy recommendations in a Guidebook on social inclusion, service access of vulnerable groups and rural social economy 

Main Target Groups 

The key stakeholders for sharing the project’s results are categorised as follows: 

  • Groups in a vulnerable situation, including migrants, minorities, elderly people, women, persons with disabilities, and informal employees.
  • Public sector, regional and local authorities and employees in the informal sector.
  • Academia.
  • Private sector, social enterprises, local SMEs, private service providers and designers.
  • EU-wide stakeholders, EU policymakers and EU-funded projects.
  • Civil society. 

Activities 

Work Package (WP) 1 – State-of-the-art research on drivers, patterns, trajectories of social inclusion and wellbeing in rural Europe.  

This WP is about re-defining and re-conceptualises social exclusion in rural areas. It analyses macro (global trends), meso (national contexts), and micro (community and individual) levels of exclusion. It will develops a typology of social wellbeing, resilience, and exclusion.

Key Deliverables: 
  • D1.1 Systematic review on measuring social inclusion and wellbeing 
  • D1.2 Multi-level analysis of exclusion drivers

  • D1.3 Typology report on wellbeing and exclusion

 

WP2 – Researching and benchmarking social empowerment services and social economy is about benchmarking the current social empowerment initiatives across rural Europe. It will develop a pan-European conceptual framework of social economy and map bottom-up social economy and entrepreneurship activities. Based on this, it will produce an interactive Atlas of services and social economy initiatives. 

Key Deliverables:
  • D2.1 Assessment of rural inclusion services and policies 
  • D2.2 Conceptual framework on social economy 
  • D2.3 Business models typology 

  • D2.4 Services and Social Economy Atlas 

 

WP3 – Building “Smart Village labs” through community engagement is about profiling pilot territories across Europe. It will engage multi-actor stakeholders to co-create local “Smart Village labs” and identify user-driven needs and social economy solutions, while establishing governance and collaboration frameworks. 

Key Deliverables: 
  • D3.1 Territorial profiles report 
  • D3.2 Labs governance and models 
  • D3.3 Local needs and solutions report 
  • D3.4 Memorandum of Collaboration 

 

WP4 – Supporting and piloting Smart Village lab activities will provide capacity building in business, digital, and soft skills. It will develop deployment roadmaps through incubation support. Also it will pilot innovative social economy initiatives and evaluate the impacts of Smart Village labs. 

Key Deliverables: 
  • D4.1 Capacity-building programme report 
  • D4.2 Deployment roadmaps 
  • D4.3 Pilot and scale-up demonstration 
  • D4.4 Evaluation results report 

 

WP5 – Replication and policy recommendations will create rural social inclusion policy recommendations, develop a Rural Social Inclusion Policy Dashboard and produce the INSPIRE Replication Guidebook and Toolkit. 

Key Deliverables: 
  • D5.1 Policy recommendations report 
  • D5.2 Policy Dashboard 
  • D5.3 Replication Toolkit and Guidebook

 

WP6 – Communication, dissemination, and exploitation will focus on coordinating  dissemination strategies and outreach, develop synergies with relevant initiatives and networks, and ensure sustainability and exploitation of results. 

Key Deliverables: 

  • D6.7–D6.8 Practice Abstracts 

 

Partnership 

Project website: 

https://inspireprojecteu.eu/  

Contact 

Funding 

GRANT AGREEMENT – No. GA 101136592 

Funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe. 

Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. 

  

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