“Today, we gather not only to reflect on the accomplishments of both BuyWISEly and Consommer Malin, Consommer Responsible project but also to celebrate the collaborative spirit that has driven us forward. Together, we have worked to empower work integration social enterprises and create a stronger ecosystem for social purchase across Europe.” – Patrizia Bussi, ENSIE director.
Throughout 18 months, Buy WISEly project worked towards fostering B2B partnerships between Work Integration Social Enterprises (WISEs) and mainstream businesses (MBs) across Europe through a series of engaging activities. Overall, Buy WISEly reached 176 WISEs, 39 WISEs representatives across Europe and 256 MBs across target countries. It was also capable of reaching out to experts from academia and sister projects, besides local and European authorities.
All results can be accessed through the project webpage, that remains available in the aftermath of this project.
With such results and the ways forward identified through our initiatives, Buy WISEly consortium launches this last newsletter with the certainty that this might have been the so-called final Conference, but we are just getting started! Check out some of our key achievements in this third and last Newsletter.
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Online platforms are out!
Digital market spaces are crucial to both WISEs and its customers to further engage on social purchase and enhance their B2B link-up. BuyWISEly partners are excited to share the three updated online platforms enabling access to services and goods developed by WISEs!
A total of 12 stakeholders were involved in upgrading 3 B2B platforms, with contributions ensuring diverse perspectives, addressing national, regional, and local needs for platform enhancements. The main changes highlighted are: optimized search functionalities and targeted vocabulary, leading to faster and more accurate results; and unique URLs for listings, improving visibility and shareability via social media, among others. Early feedback already indicates that the platforms are better aligned with user needs, laying the groundwork for increased access rates and more effective collaborations between MBs and WISEs.
The websites are at one click to present varied products and services to Businesses, public bodies, and the public in general. Equally important, they represent good practices that can be replicated to maximize the matchmaking between WISEs and MBs, and even to increase access to information for persons facing long term unemployment. Check them out!
Austria: https://arbeitplus.at/datenbank-sozialer-unternehmen/
Ireland: https://buysocial.ie/directory
Netherlands: https://socialezaken.info/ |
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BuyWISEly Policy Recommendations
The Buy WISEly policy recommendations were presented on the last panel of our Final Conference ‘Partnering up for increased social impact: WISEs and mainstream businesses together’, closing the event with very important inputs for orienting the continuation of business development between WISEs and MBs. The policy recommendations promote measures that can foster sustainable partnerships and recognize the social value of WISEs. Its focus from Local to EU level aims at providing a comprehensive adoption, and to raise awareness on varied forms of partnership with WISEs, and the positive outcomes deriving from it.
This last deliverable, along with more than 40 Deeds of Commitments set across the 4 countries, composes the basis for the Buy WISEly further adoption as a reference for future actions, in line with our Exploitation plan.
Read more
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| We are happy to close our series of good practices with a great initiative in Austria, presented by arbeit plus during our final event. |
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Herbios and De Schmiede
Herbios is an emerging start-up with a vision to enrich cities with edible greenery. HerBios therefore offers vertical green beds, which are multifunctional design elements that simultaneously produce food in an ecological way (without heating, lighting, and artificial fertilizers).
The Schmiede is a non-profit employment project first launched by arbeit+ and Zukunft. It offers services in the field of green space maintenance, kindergarten care and libraries. In addition, social work is an elementary aspect of their work. The Schmiede works with six key staff and offers up to 14 places for transitional workers with supportive needs. In this practice, a cooperation agreement for services outsourcing allows Schmiede beneficiaries to acquire experience and work in assembling the vertical beds From the Schmiede’s point of view, this project is pioneering work in the field of ecological sustainability and gardening. The gains are also tangible in the joint discussions on quality standards, billing modalities, and storage options, which adds to Schmiede’s expertise build-up and the mutual trust with HerBios. |
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La Varappe and ONET
Joint expertise towards innovative impact measurement for a lasting job inclusion. This week, BuyWISEly series of good practices bring highlights to a practice identified by BUYSOCIAL project!
Inclusion and job insertion are not only about finding a job upon a limited timeframe. Besides the training and job placement aspect, the acquisition of new social & soft skills; and the increased wellbeing of disadvantaged workers within the process are also key success factors.
In France, La Varappe and ONET partner-up for a pioneering initiative that can bring impact measurement and WISEs recognition to the next level, and increase traditional companies understanding on their social impact, and forms of partnership.
La Varappe is an integration company based in Aubagne, South of France, with expertise in four main areas: environment, eco construction, resources & skills and healthcare.
ONET is a large group based in Marseille and employing people in integration through cooperation, the two organisations work together to make sense of the impact of support programmes. The analysis goes beyond the simple identification of job placement, proposing a long-term monitoring of people’s degree of inclusion, by assessing their social, personal and professional progress beyond their first months of employment.
This approach also recognises the complexity of the inclusion trajectory and the need for long-term monitoring to ensure the sustainability of outcomes. In short, it strives to create an evaluation framework that is more comprehensive and better adapted to the reality of people living in precarious conditions.
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Scale up events in Latvia and Romania!
In addition to the Trade fairs, Buy WISEly was also present in two other countries thanks to the collaboration set with SEAL and RISE Romania for the promotion of project resources to audiences of WISEs and MBs.
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| The scale-up events enabled a more comprehensive understanding of the challenges faced by WISEs and Social Enterprises in general when it comes to giving one step further in reaching to new business partners. On total, more than 20 MBs and WISEs joined the events and learned about successful B2B being put in place across Europe.
In Latvia, the event adopted a ‘trade fair’ format, that stimulated organisations to get to know each other through a round of ‘speed dating’ to build new contacts and potential relations. |
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Two study visits were set up as a sequence to the Buy WISEly final Conference. Participants could choose between two Belgian WISEs with distinctive core activities: personalized support provision and housing (Gammes asbl) and Waste management and circular economy of civil construction materials (Batiterre).
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