The rEdESIGN Transnational Workshop, held on 02–03 December 2025 in Rethymno, Crete, marked a key milestone for the project “rEdESIGN – Fostering Social Entrepreneurship in Rural Areas for Sustainable Food Systems” (Project No. 101169928 — SMP-COSME-2023-RESILIENCE).
The workshop brought together social cooperative enterprises (KOINSEP), agri-food stakeholders, cultural organisations, policy actors and training institutions from Greece, Italy and Spain to explore one central theme:
“Problematic fields of action of Social Cooperative Enterprises (KOINSEP) and proposed solutions.”
🌍 Learning from the Territory
Participants visited the Psiloritis UNESCO Global Geopark and the “Shepherd’s Land” theme park, experiencing first-hand how biodiversity protection, traditional livestock practices and local agri-food products can coexist within sustainable rural development models. These visits highlighted how territorial identity and environmental stewardship are directly linked to social cooperative resilience.
🤝 From Experience to Analysis
The workshop combined field experience with:
- Stakeholder presentations from Androidus – Argastiri Cultural Organisation and N-Idea KOINSEP,
- A second-day applied workshop in Spili,
- And the collection of eight structured questionnaires from cooperative actors in Spain, Italy and Greece.
The analysis confirmed that Social Cooperative Enterprises face shared European challenges, including:
- Access to funding
- Administrative and legal complexity
- Skills gaps
- High costs of green transition
- Digitalisation barriers
At the same time, all participants expressed strong interest in continued cross-border collaboration, confirming the importance of the rEdESIGN transnational approach.
✅ A Strong Step Forward
The Crete workshop demonstrated that social cooperatives are not peripheral actors, but key drivers of:
- Rural resilience
- Sustainable agri-food systems
- Green and digital transition
- Social inclusion and territorial cohesion
The outcomes of this workshop now feed directly into the next strategic phase of the rEdESIGN project.
