Central European Rural Social Innovation-Implementing Central European Rural Social Innovation Lab Caravans to build skills and capacities in social innovation, social entrepreneurship and circular economy

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The CERUSI project implements a Rural Social Innovation Lab Caravan to build skills and capacities for social innovation and social entrepreneurship. Rural regions in Central Europe often lack support structures to keep people in the region. Contrary to urban areas, there are few accelerator hubs or other options that offer support to people who want to change something for the better in their community. Although the EU has invested a lot in regional development, people in the most rural regions are often still not reached by the projects, because the institutions conducting these projects are again situated in the comparatively well-equipped urban areas. Therefore, CERUSI adopts the innovative approach of RSI_LAB Caravans, bringing the project to the people, harvesting challenges in their communities, their ideas and providing a temporary support framework that is envisioned to be transformed into a partnership between local actors interested in bringing their region forward and their like-minded peers all over CE. CERUSI builds on tools developed in other EU projects focused on social innovation and social entrepreneurship. CERUSI will make use of the training courses for social entrepreneurship and social innovation developed in the Social(i)makers project that will be used to provide interested citizens, innovators and ongoing entrepreneurs with training modules on topics related to SI. Even more focused on SE is the SENTINEL project, which developed a handbook for SE that will be promoted through CERUSI. Last but not least, CERUSI will also actively push the use of the RAIN-Business model, a concept elaborated in the EU project LiveRuR that combines principles of circular economy and social inclusion with state-of-the-art business development models. These elements taken together and mixed up with the transnational exchange of knowledge and experience will help rural regions to capitalise on their potentials and create socially inclusive regional development.

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