Description - Social Production

Social Production (sopro) is a project idea of KOMUNITAS OG, which has been implemented since March 2012 as an ETC project with project partners from Austria and Hungary. It is the aim to expand cooperation of enterprises, public clients and social enterprises, and to find and develop sustainable products and services of high quality, and to further their marketability, so that a broader public becomes familiar with them.

sopro intends to throw light on the performance of social enterprises – enterprises and projects in the second and third labour markets – under the aspect of sustainability, because their work in general is a type of regional economic activity with a social component.

Development of Project

Social Production is based on the knowledge about strengths, advantages and sustainability of occupational projects in the expanded labour market. Social Production has been developed from positive practical experiences with qualification enterprises in the production of ecologically sustainable and innovative products. The basic idea of this project is a broader advertisement and use of social enterprises by the public sector and private economy.

Based on these experiences, in 2009 a cooperation between the Province of Lower Austria (Department of Rural Development – LF6) and KOMUNITAS OG came into existence, in order to try possibilities of broader cooperation between public institutions (Lower Austria) and occupational projects under the aspect of sustainability and regional funding and rural development, respectively. In March 2012, the sopro HU-AT ETC project was approved successfully, and ever since it has been continued as a cross-border project, subsidized by the EU.

Developing ideas and linking partners

An essential finding resulting from previous experience is the need for a link between an idea of a potential client and its implementation in a social enterprise, which KOMUNITAS OG and the project partners of sopro HU-AT try to provide. Quite frequently, a creative co-development of product ideas is required, and networking is necessary in order to find the right partner in social economy.

The project partners from Lower Austria, Vienna, Styria, Burgenland and West Hungary therefore assume the role of procuration, according to needs, between customers and social enterprises and between ideas and their implementation (product development).

Contents of website

The platform socially produced (sozialproduziert.at) shows best-practice examples of social enterprises in its articles, presents innovative and sustainable products and services of social enterprises, shows cooperation between economic and social enterprises, and serves for linking them.

This website does not claim to show a comprehensive product catalogue. It consciously describes "lighthouses of sustainability", and thereby gives a tiny glance, which services are offered by social projects, and how public clients and companies may use these offers.