The Social Cooperatives Center of Excellence Project basically aims to ensure the cooperation and communication of social cooperatives in the European Union and Turkey at the local, regional and national level. One of the planned steps to achieve this determined goal was to carry out a field trip to Italy, one of the leading countries, in order to listen to good practices on site. We attended the "Social Enterprise Open Camp" event held between 23-26 October in Venice, San Servolo island, in order to listen to sample practices and reflect the knowledge and experiences we will gain to the Social Cooperatives Center of Excellence Project. The event was a comprehensive organization with the participation of approximately 200-250 people from many parts of the world, mostly from Italy, but both as speakers and listeners. As the main theme, "planet and human" was chosen for this year, taking into account the events experienced during the Covid-19 process, the climate crisis and its effects.
The event, which consisted of different workshops, speakers from different parts of the world, and participants specializing in different fields, was based on the concept of "social enterprise". What has been experienced due to the Covid-19 pandemic for about 2 years has clearly shown people that something needs to change. In addition to the pandemic, the devastating consequences of the climate crisis, the greater impact of all these experiences on disadvantaged groups, and the effect of the "human" factor in all this, hit us hard in the face that the time to do something has already come, maybe even passing. The event, which focused on the concept of “social enterprise”, provided us with extremely important and useful information on what we can do to transform things, how we can improve our business models and activities, how we can act by creating “social benefit” by reducing consumption and increasing sustainability. Different workshops organized on topics such as waste management, renewable and alternative energy, sustainable, environmentally friendly and environmentally friendly production chains have led us to gain seminal experiences, where people from many parts of the world and the different perspectives created by this way discuss how to increase the "social benefit". it happened. Speeches covering many topics such as impact management, social finance, social impact analysis, impact investing enabled us to develop new and useful ideas about the field.Social Entrepreneurship: Social entrepreneurship is the entrepreneurial activities carried out by individuals, institutions and organizations, groups, keeping social benefit and finding solutions to social problems in the foreground, while making financial benefits and profits in the background. Social enterprises take the center of transforming society in many different ways. Social Benefit: Social benefit refers to the net effect of the activities carried out for the transformation, development and improvement of individuals and society.
The event, in which the importance of social benefit was emphasized, brought us together with new views on how and in what ways social cooperatives in Turkey could improve their activities, and also enabled us to form exciting ideas about how we could integrate the conclusions and relationships we gained from the event into our project.
While we have a long road ahead of us, we have already started to think about how we can add more benefits to the planet and people by adding this experience to what we have!
| Social Entrepreneurship: Social entrepreneurship is the entrepreneurial activities carried out by individuals, institutions and organizations, groups, keeping social benefit and finding solutions to social problems in the foreground, while making financial benefits and profits in the background. Social enterprises take the center of transforming society in many different ways. | Social Benefit: Social benefit refers to the net effect of the activities carried out for the transformation, development and improvement of individuals and society. |
The event, in which the importance of social benefit was emphasized, brought us together with new views on how and in what ways social cooperatives in Turkey could improve their activities, and also enabled us to form exciting ideas on how we could integrate the inferences and relationships we gained from the event into our project.
While we have a long road ahead of us, we have already started to think about how we can add more benefits to the planet and people by adding this experience to what we have!
