The need for the project, claim HOT, is “obvious because of the ageing population, the growing needs and market for the welfare services, and because of the lack of employees in the field. Setting enterprise with welfare will add resources, allowing highly educated staff to concentrate on core duties.”

HOT, part of the Equal Community Initiative Programme under the EU Social Fund, is coordinated by the National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health, of which Oulu is one of the partners. The others are Helsinki, Espoo, and Turku. The project also involves other research and education organisations.

Finland has had a social enterprises act since 2004. According to Finnish law, a social enterprise is a business like any other producing services or goods, aiming to make profit, and paying employees salaries according to the collective labour agreement. The difference is that at least thirty percent of workers are disabled and long-term unemployed, entitling them to wage subsidies.

HOT plans to develop transnationally, participating in the transnational partnership S.E.E.N. with partners Finland, Italy, Poland, and Scotland, “to build social cohesion, regenerate communities, improve job quality and integrate those at greatest disadvantage in society.”

The partnership has so far involved the “exchange of ideas, developing methodologies, reports, information as well as impacts and outputs within the area of social enterprise development.”

Fourty participants from the member countries took part recently in a ‘study visit programme,’ a ‘platform for trading information.’ “It enriched and widened our reciprocal knowledge of the social economy,” commented one participant.

Scots, Polish, and Italians even visited northern Finland in January, as far north as Kemi and Rovaniemi. In Oulu their visits included Tervatulli, the first ‘social firm’ in Finland, and the Centre of Companionship, a meeting point for citizens, public authorities, and non-governmental organisations.

HOT has several prominent working groups, Public Social Partnership & Procurement, Social Added Value, New Financial Instruments, and Good Practice through Exchange.