BRESE

Currently, we are facing a number of societal challenges, such as climate change, the pollution of our oceans, demographic change and, very acutely, the COVID-pandemic. However, instead of tackling these challenges sustainably at their core cause, we often only tackle the symptoms. Facing these challenges, we need to rethink our approaches in order to bring about long-term change and to make a sustainable positive impact. Social Entrepreneurs want to facilitate exactly this sustainable change and tackle nowadays` challenges with innovative and future-oriented solutions. Managed in a transparent and democratic manner, social enterprises combine an entrepreneurial spirit with achieving wider social, environmental or community objectives. Especially for European (border) regions, social enterprises bear an enormous potential. Despite this great potential of social enterprises, however, it is still difficult for them to find suitable funding, support and investments schemes. Measuring their profits not only by a financial aspect but also by an impact aspect, it is often difficult for them to compete with "traditional" enterprises when it comes to investments and loans. Moreover, the landscape of available business support facilities, tailored legal forms for social enterprises and their political recognition is very fragmented among European countries. Making use of existing differences in European regions, the BRESE project aims to exchange experiences and best practices with their partners from different European regions. This will help the regions to improve existing policy instruments and support schemes with regard to social enterprises. Based on the findings of the project, an action plan will be drawn up for each region at the end of the project, containing concrete recommendations for regional policy makers on how regional funding instruments can be made more effective to support social enterprises more adequately and sustainably