Overview of the Project

PRO-CHANGE aims to contribute to the management of change, in terms of enhancing readiness to respond to the economic and social restructuring. It intends to create anticipation mechanisms that will enhance the capacity of local stakeholders and actors to be timely prepared and to effectively respond to the challenges and opportunities of restructuring process. It will seek to establish collaboration frameworks at the regional and transnational level, aiming to transfer knowledge and capitalize on the lessons learnt from past ESF initiatives, while adding value to existing structures and strategies. To that end it will develop Coordination and Support Structures, in the Prefecture of Thessaloniki (Greece) and in the Province of Lucca (Italy), which will faciliate the wide diffusion of good practices and will improve the coordination of change management actions.

The project addresses the issue of Change Management, bringing together all local entities of different countries that are responsible for dealing with restructuring problems in order to ensure a high level of competitiveness, viability and prosperity for their regions. The participating countries are Greece, Italy, United Kingdom and Bulgaria, represented by the project’s partners, while the partnership includes the Prefectural Authority of Thessaloniki (GR), OPEN EUROPE Society (GR), TREK Consulting S.A. (GR), the Province of Lucca (IT), London School of Economics - The Economic & Social Cohesion Laboratory (UK) and the Bulgarian Association of Regional Development Agencies and Business Centers - BARDA (BG).

Priority Issues

The main priority issues addressed by the project are four, including:

The creation of “local partnerships” in each region in the form of Advisory Councils to connect and coordinate all relevant stakeholders and support the development of anticipation mechanisms and systems. The Structure that will be created will be used at a territorial level in order to support all regional stakeholders to deal with restructuring problems when the latter emerge.

The development of anticipation mechanisms and tools to better manage restructuring. The aim is to manage restructuring proactively so as to minimize the ultimate economic and social cost for workers, enterprises and public authorities, helping them actually to take advantage of the opportunities that may arise during the restructuring process. The identification of benchmarks will also be used to identify constructive solutions that can be adopted at a local and European level.

At the same time, the exchange of know-how between regions will help the development of integrated approaches to confront the implications of restructuring process. The transnational character of the project, the activities foreseen and the Structure that will be created will not only collect relevant information and improve the dissemination of know-how; it will also bring together regions with similar problems and facilitate thus the formulation of a single approach, that will comprise all best practices already used and incorporate also new ideas and techniques.

Finally, capacity building for the stakeholders concerned will be addressed in PRO-CHANGE mainly through the Training & Capacity Building Programs that will be implemented to help local partners better cope with the restructuring issues.

Aims and Objectives

The main aims and objectives of the project are:

• To set-up a Structure to enhance the communication and coordination practices amongst all relevant stakeholders involved in the restructuring process, exchanging knowledge and best practices.
• To achieve added value on existing infrastructure and experience by utilizing them in the context of the present intervention.
• To research and analyze the current social and economic background in order to formulate integrated strategies for building anticipation mechanisms to changes of restructuring.
• To create synergies between regional/ local authorities and other actors at the regional, national and transnational level to better deal with problems and exploit opportunities presented by restructuring.
• To extend the transfer of knowledge to accession countries as a response to the new European perspective for an enlarged Europe.
• To increase effectiveness of agency and personnel by developing/upgrading/integrating anticipation mechanisms to best prepare for the economic and social adaption to the restructuring process.
• To develop capacity building programmes that will enable local stakeholder to effectively deal with the issues of restructuring.
• To develop effective approaches to skill upgrading that will enable re-insertion of the unemployed in the labour market.
• To increase prospects of employment by identifying new profiles of employment especially in the social economy and the tourism sector.
• To ensure the sustainability of the systems, structures and strategies created by the project.

Action Plan

The whole action plan can be summarised in the seven Phases of the project, which are:

1. Existing Situation Analysis – Identification of Best Practice and Benchmarking
2. Formulation and Implementation of Integrated Strategies and Action Plans for Anticipation Mechanisms at the Local level
3. Establish the Coordination and Support Structures for Change Management – Training and Capacity Building Programmes
4. Dissemination and Mainstreaming of Project’s Results
5. On-going and ex-post evaluation of Project’s Results
6. Identification of Potential Multiplier Effects – Sustainability and follow-up of the Project
7. Project Management and Coordination

Expected Outcomes

Within a total duration of 24 months, PRO-CHANGE will provide the following outcomes:

• Formulation of Integrated Strategies and Action Plans for Anticipation and adaption Mechanisms at a local level. Thus, the project will reinforce local/ regional authorities in terms of safeguarding the economic and social prosperity of their region.
• Local or regional authorities and other stakeholders concerned will benefit from the exploitation of existing infrastructure and the collaboration frameworks that will be developed at the regional and transnational level.
• Important benefits and positive effects in terms of employment, employability and entrepreneurship for the targeted population. More specifically, unemployment flows stemming from sectoral crisis due to economic or social change will be identified ahead of time and human resources will be guided to more profitable sectors. Encountering these problems will directly benefit the socially disadvantaged groups, since in crisis situations they are usually the most heavily affected ones.
• Inclusion of social and academic partners in the communication network will benefit entire societies, since the exchange of knowledge and point of views among local/ regional authorities and entities that represent or deal with the specified target groups, will result in the formulation of strategies that are focused on real needs and actual problems; thus, the whole socio–economic environment will benefit from the interventions of PRO-CHANGE.

Project’s stakeholders and Beneficiaries

The key stakeholders and Beneficiaries that need to be engaged in project’s actions are:

• Public Authorities and organizations
• Enterprises and Associations
• Workers and unions
• Civil society
• Vocational Training Centres
• Indirect stakeholders