About the Project

SEMPRE – Social Empowerment in Rural Areas

SEMPRE aims to equip social service providers in rural areas of the Baltic Sea Region with better tools for service innovation. These tools are based on the idea of empowerment and end-user involvement, which means that their purpose is to give people in rural areas – especially those belonging to vulnerable groups – a better say in their future and to strengthen their ability to get involved in social innovation processes.

Key activities:
– Setting up local and regional networks for empowerment in the partner countries
– Developing and testing empowerment tools in needs assessment, service development and innovation support
– Initiating and supporting micro projects as examples for user driven social services
– Compiling an empowerment handbook and training modules for social service provider staff
– Collecting good practice in end-user involvement and drawing up a roadmap for organisations in the social sector

Project lifetime
03/2016-02/2019

Funding Source
– Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme 2014-2020 (European Regional Development Fund) of the European Union
– Priority 1: ‘Capacity for innovation’
– Specific objective 1.3: ‘Non-technological innovation – to advance the Baltic Sea Region performance in non-technological innovation based on increased capacity of innovation actors

Lead Partner
Diaconie of Schleswig-Holstein (Diakonisches Werk Schleswig-Holstein)

Countries involved (number of partners)
Denmark (1), Estonia (2), Finland (2), Germany (3), Latvia (3), Lithuania (1), Poland (1), Sweden (3)

Read more about the project: http://www.sempre-project.eu/