The RAISE project has the objective to enhance social enterprises competitiveness through improved business support policies. In order to improve these policies, the six regional partners involved in the project (from the regions of Emilia Romagna - Italy, Budapest – Hungary, Catalonia – Spain, Örebro – Sweden, Mayo – Ireland, Scotland - UK) have to develop action plans based on the interregional learning experiences collected throughout the project. The learning experiences included the exchange of Good Practice policies from the regions that already impact the social enterprise sector in a positive way as well as study visits taking place in every region.

In its function as scientific advisory partner, ZSI co-developed guidelines to structure the process of exchanging experiences, building up to the elaboration of regional action plans influencing selected policy instruments. To ensure that the regional partners were familiar with the concept of action plans and their specific meaning in Interreg projects, ZSI hosted an interactive workshop in the format of a “Thematic Café” at the last interregional workshop in Ireland.

This workshop allowed the participants to collaboratively discuss about key aspects and possible solutions for key challenges shared across the regions that were identified earlier in the project. After this final interregional meeting, ZSI will continue to support the partners in drafting their action plans and elaborating a monitoring concept for them in order to implement them in the second phase opf the project (July 2018- July 2021).