SE HUBS EUROPEAN CONFERENCE

The European Conference with the title: “Building Stronger Ecosystems for Social Enterprises in Europe”, was organized and coordinated by the Athens Lifelong Learning Institute. The conference was held at Impact Hub in Athens on April 3 and 4, 2023.

The conference was delivered within the context of the “SEHubs Project: Co-creating Hubs for Social Enterprises”, which was funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission.

At the opening of the conference greetings were conducted by:

• Agnese Papadia – Deputy Head of the Social & Inclusive Entrepreneurship Unit in Doctorate General for Employment at European Commission,
• Antonis Papaderakis – Deputy Regional Governor of Crete,
• Haralambos Alexandratos – Regional Vice Governor for Education of Attica and
• Sokratis Kefalogiannis – Mayor of Anogeia.

During the plenary session, speakers gave important insights on the issues relating to the building of stronger ecosystems for social enterprises in Europe, the scopes, objectives and priorities of the SEHubs project and the description of the project role models, as key persons with action in the field of social entrepreneurship. With reference to the best practices, each partner country shared examples of innovative and applicable practices in social organizations.

The content of the sessions, the policy roundtables and the national working groups that took place, reflected both the overall and individual experience of all countries on a theoretical, as well as at on implementation level. The mutual commitment of all partners involved in the project, led to the drawing of important conclusions, which centered around:

• the enhancement of human capital development and capacity building of social enterprises
• the empowerment of the social entrepreneurship network on a transnational level
• the sustainability and evolution of the social enterprise ecosystem with advanced support mechanisms