Final Workshop of the InTSEnSE project in Freiburg
Hosted at the University of Education in Freiburg between 8th and 10th of April 2019, the workshop was the final event of the InTSEnSE project.
While in Freiburg the project partners discussed on work plan and progress and decided upon the content of the interactive modules, which will be part of the final on-line manual, as part of dissemination results. The manual will be published on the InTSEnSE website. The first session on Monday had highlighted the importance of having further virtual meetings. Therefore, two Skype meetings were agreed for the 17th of June and 30th of September 2019.
Moreover, in the afternoon of the second workshop day, three social enterprises were visited. The scope of these interactions with social entrepreneurs was to find out more about their internationalization and marketing strategies. The first visited social enterprise was “Weiche Freiburg”, in which refugees and other long term unemployed young adults are trained in hospitability and prepared for entering the labor market.
The second social enterprise we visited was the 3 HäuserProjekt, i.e. Luftschloss project in Gutleutmatten Freiburg. The desire for self-determined living, community and sharing resources in solidarity has brought together a group of 38 people aged 0 to 68 to build a social and solidary rental house, financed in proportion of two thirds by the banks and one third, i.e. one Million Euro, with the help of Mietshäuser Syndikat (a syndicate for rental buildings) and direct loans.
Most of the people living in the house either have already lived together or they know each other through work, friendships, and political and social commitment. What is special about the project is that the rent is very low (of 6.5 Euro/m2) compared to the rents in the city otherwise.
To date, more than 100 projects have been successfully established in this way in the Syndicate tenement houses throughout Germany. And the projects get international attention as well. The third and last project we visited was the Bookbakers. Under the slogan “Shaping literature together”, the online software solution Bookbakers creates different networks among players in the book industry and also allows readers to participate in the book creation process. One module generates forecasts for the market success of a manuscript, another supports the creation of crowd publishing campaigns. In this process, only local printer agencies are involved. Behind the Bookbakers is Kladdebuchverlag, a spin-off of the University of Freiburg with a team of founders, students, freelancers, and coaches. Their goal is to develop contemporary strategies for publishing and crowd financing. After such an intensive afternoon, a well-deserved dinner followed in the evening.
On our last workshop day, we have discussed the future tasks in the project and about the estimated expected impact of the project’s results. At around 2 o’clock all project partners said goodbye and headed to their home countries.