Malta Enterprise has launched a new project entitled FOSO-POCO (Fostering Social Entrepreneurship Ecosystems Post-COVID19), together with foreign partners Tartu City Government and Cork Local Council, with co-funding from the Executive Agency for Small and Medium Enterprises (EASME), under the COSME program.
The project, which will run until February 2022, aims to improve the understanding of social entrepreneurship in the regions of Cork (Ireland), Tartu (Estonia) and Malta itself through a comparison of their respective systems and the involvement of experts to address existing gaps.
These figures will assist social enterprises to address, in particular, the dynamics of the post-COVID economy, in order to promote economic development and create jobs, as well as guide, launch and internationalize their products or services, through the networks of the project partners in Ireland, Estonia and Malta. Special attention will be given to social enterprises involved in providing a service or product in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
Malta Enterprise is also involved in the Interreg Europe project ‘RELOS3‘, which focuses on improving the dissemination of the country’s smart specialization strategies (RIS3) in a local context by actively involving the Maltese authorities.
Smart specialization is an innovative EU-led approach that aims to promote growth and jobs in Europe by enabling each region to identify and develop its own competitive advantages. Through its bottom-up approach, Smart Specialization brings together local authorities, academia, economic spheres and civil society, working towards the implementation of long-term growth strategies supported by EU funds.
The six project partners are the Sabadell Economic Development Agency (Spain); the Tartu City Government (Estonia); the Metropolitan City of Bologna (Italy); the Emmen Local Authority (Netherlands); the Wielkopolska Regional Authority (Poland); and Malta Enterprise. All these players in the field are strongly linked to the support and promotion of advanced manufacturing and ICT sectors in their respective regions.
Also Malta Enterprise finally announced that Interreg Europe’s “Innova Foster” project, launched in January 2017, has recently been successfully concluded. The objective was to push high-potential start-ups through support for innovation processes, in order to strengthen their role as providers of innovative practices in the national arena. A local action plan, the result of close collaboration with key local stakeholders, served to identify and address key challenges in the local startup ecosystem. Through this project, Malta Enterprise supported the creation of the National Start-up Foundation (SUM), improved business incentives for start-ups, and organized the national Startup Café event.
