News & Activities

On 25 February 2019 the SEMPRE project has been hosted by the Laznia Cooperative (4C Centrum Ekonomii Spotecznej/Kooperatywa Laźnia) in Szczecin, Poland. Thereby the SEMPRE concepts and tools for Empowerment were presented to an audience of social workers, scientiests, and representatives from public authorities and regional development agencies.

"Make Empowerment Happen!" - this was the motto of the SEMPRE final conference that took place in Riga on 27 and 28 November 2018. It was a lively event, highlighted by the showcase of 18 service user-driven micro projects from all over the Baltic Sea Region.

As the Final Conference "Make Empowerment" in Riga, Latvia is starting, we are glad to announce that we have published the first results of our three years of work in the SEMPRE project: The "Empowerment Handbook" that gives practical advice on how to apply user involvement in social service design, a compilation of the micro projects that were developed and implemented in co-creation processes in the SEMPRE partner regions and a "pocket" version of the organisational roadmap.

You'll find these publications here.

The SEMPRE project partner Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences coordially invites your to the jointly organized regional conference and annual conference in education in Valmiera, Latvia, which is going to focus on inclusive education and social entrepreneurship topics, emphasizing future professions and skills that will help to develop learning methods and resources that can be used in the future work.

As one of the main outputs of the SEMPRE project the Training Modules shall raise the competence of social service provider’s staff to cope with the challenges of empowerment and end-user involvement in their work. Thus, it is essential that these training modules will be developed, tested and evaluated in a real environment, before the final version is disseminated to the public. Sign up for further empowerment workshops taking place this year, for instance in Kiel (Germany). Register now!!!

Malin Lindberg, Professor in Innovation Studies at the Luleå Technical University (Sweden) has laid out an excellent account of social innovation and empowerment, wherereby she provided an analysis on how these concepts are apporached in the SEMPRE project. We are proud to publish her paper "Empowering rural social innovation in the SEMPRE project".

The conference was organized on behalf of the International Federation of Social Workers, the International Schools of Social Work and the International Council on Social Welfare and has gathered around 2400 delegates from around the world in the Royal Dublin Society between 4 and 7 July 2018 in order to discuss issues related to the conference theme “Environmental and Community Sustainability: Human Solutions in Evolving Societies”. SEMPRE partners from Denmark, Finland and Germany were particularly proud to have been offered the opportunity for a poster session to present SEMPRE to the conference delegates.

When the SEMPRE project team of Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences was asked to join the opening of the NGO “Save the children” in Liepa, Latvia, a small rural community, they were surprised to meet so many children and families enjoying the day. It was the starting point for regular meetings with mothers, youth being outside the labour market, education and training.

In mid-April, German and Swedish project partners invited a number of social service providers from their region to participate in a five-day excursion to Italy in order to learn about a variety of projects fostering empowerment and social improvement and exchange with their counterparts.

On 18 April 2018 around 30 parents, their children and a number of volunteers gathered for an evening of fellowship, fun and conversations. The Local Empowerment Network (LEN) of Tønder and Varde initated this event for refugees and migrants to enjoy themselves, but also discuss and reflect on the childrens' situation and their future in order to elaborate on self-managed solutions to support each other.

In the spirit of transnational cooperation and exchange of SEMPRE, the leaders of the Kocenu County Council and representatives of the social services from Valmiera, Mazsalaca, Priekuli and Amata districts participated at a study trip to to Estonia, organized by the SEMPRE partner Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences with the aim to exchange experiences and learn from each other.

The SEMPRE partner Novia University of Applied Sciences works with older adults as our focus group in the SEMPRE project. During last year, a micro project called “Locally Produced Joy of Life”, was developed together with older adults and social service producers in the municipality of Korsholm/Mustasaari.

Halfway through the lifetime of the transnational project SEMPRE, the activities of the micro projects gained momentum in many partnership countries including Lithuania. On the first weekend of autumn, a micro project was started in the town Jurbarkas, Lithuania.

The University College South Denmark (UC Syd) invited the SEMPRE partners to present and discuss the progress on the training modules which will be delivered to social service providers to equip their staff with necessary skills and expertise.

Around 70 participants from the Baltic Sea Region discussed social innovation and organisational change in the mid-term conference of the SEMPRE project in Tallinn, Estonia on 14 September 2017. A documentation of the conference will be posted on this website soon.

The SEMPRE project has coorganised a workshop entitled “Building capacities for bottom-up social innovation in regional development” on Tuesday, 10 October 2017 in Brussels. The event took place during the European Week of Regions and Cities.

The Mid-Term Conference of the SEMPRE project will take place on 14 September 2017 in the Estonian National Library in Tallinn, Estonia. It will be hosted by the Estonian Evangelical-Lutheran Church and have the title "Social Innovation and Organisational Change - Challenges and Opportunities for Social Service Providers"

You can register for the conference through this link: SEMPRE Mid-Term Conference Registration Form.

The Lutheran Diaconia in Lithuania hosted the fifth transnational meeting of the SEMPRE partnership on 5-7 April in Klaipeda. The partners got together to discuss the experience made with empowerment tools for disadvantaged groups and to discuss the next steps in the project. The meeting also featured and excursion to the rehabilitation centre "Gabrielijus".

In April the Municipality of Toender and University College South Denmark (UC SYD) invited social service providers, volunteer organizations, local business people and refugees to participate in a workshop with focus on how we can work together on empowering refugees in the area.

16 participants of the integration course from the Wirtschaftsakademie Schleswig-Holstein in Husum took part in a workshop to analyse the needs of supporting services for refugees. These needs will be the basis for micro projects to be developed in the next stage.

On 10 May 2017 the SEMPRE Partners from Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, invite associated partners and other interested parties to the second regional seminar in Rendsburg. The seminar will focus on rural areas and how they are changing, specifically with a view on social service delivery.

The Local Empowerment Networks in SEMPRE are creating their own blogs to report about local work with vulnerable groups and social service providers. The first two blogs (for the counties of Dithmarschen and Nordfriesland) are now online - you will find them by clicking on "Local Networks" in the top menu.

The SEMPRE Kick-off Conference under the title "The Future of Social Service Delivery in the Baltic Sea Region" took place on 29 September in the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure in Berlin, Germany.

Conference documentation, including photos and presentations, will be published on this website soon!

As the 29^th September is getting closer, you can find the agenda, hotel recommendations and directions to the venue (German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure ) for the Kick-off conference “The Future of Social Service Delivery in the Baltic Sea Region” of the SEMPRE project  for download.

The first big meeting of social service providers in the Local Empowerment Network in Dithmarschen took part on July 19th, 2016.The project SEMPRE was introduced and in following workshops first ideas for microprojects and further impulses discussed.

SEMPRE will hold a public kick-off conference on 29 September at the premises of the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure in Berlin. Please mark the date in your calendar! In times of demographic change and limited public finances it becomes increasingly difficult for the public sector to maintain a reliable social service infrastructure in rural areas. Outward migration of young and well-qualified people further aggravates this challenge, and vulnerable groups at the risk of poverty and exclusion - such as older people, migrants, people with disabilities, families and single parents - are in danger of being left behind.

The 16 partners of the SEMPRE project met on 15-17 June 2016 in Esbjerg, Denmark, to work on transnational activities such as establishing Local Empowerment Networks, assessing the needs of vulnerable groups in rural areas and analysing the framework conditions for delivery of social services in the Baltic Sea Region. The meeting was hosted by University College South Denmark. The partners also used the opportunity to exchange signatures of the Partnership Agreement, the contract that has been concluded between all partner organisations for the SEMPRE project.

On 12^th May 2016 the three partners in Schleswig-Holstein, Diakonie Schleswig-Holstein, Kirchlicher Dienst in der Arbeitswelt der Nordkirche and Wirtschaftsakademie Schleswig-Holstein conducted the first meeting with associated partners to discuss and define their possible future role in the SEMPRE project.