Supporting social entrepreneurs and the Municipality of Rotterdam in improving communication and cooperation around young people who face barriers to entering the labor market.
The challenge was for the group of researchers to identify where the bottlenecks occurred in coordination and communication between the municipality and social entrepreneurs regarding the target groups, and to determine what could be done to address them.
The group’s solution consisted of two parts: a concise publication containing practical, applicable lessons for both social entrepreneurs and public organizations on how to collaborate effectively; and a physical board game ‘Stadsbengels’ developed to allow stakeholders from various institutions—social entrepreneurs, government bodies, and others—to play together and better understand what the target group experiences and how collaboration can be improved.
The impact of the collaboration was immediately evident. This was due to the opportunity to provide direct feedback during the implementation of a new partnership between the municipality and social entrepreneurs: the Rotterdam Recruitment Agency. The tips and insights could be applied right away in the project that ran parallel to the research. The publication and the game allow these and other parties to continually revisit and apply these lessons in daily practice.
The RRA has ultimately developed into a best-practice example of a social impact startup that emerged from a collaborative network of partners. Civil servants involved in the project also gained a new perspective on social impact and the various actors involved in creating it.
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