Koukouva S.C.E. profile for the SE-HUB Project
Challenge overview
The current socio-economic conditions in Greece, but also in many other countries, have made many people in their most creative years to feel that their choices are limited to immigration, unemployment, precariousness or abandonment of all labor rights. For the members of Koukouva kinsep, social entrepreneurship, with the values of active participation, co-operation and solidarity, is an important alternative with significant social and economic benefits to individuals, local communities and the international community.
Now, more and more social enterprises are established due to the announcements that there is supposed to be a specified financial and resource support to social economy organizations by the state, but in many cases, they lack knowledge and understanding of social enterprises and social issues. This is advertised for years now, but it is not in place yet. There have been projects for financial support for enterprises (that included social ones) but this has raised different bureaucratic issues due to the special form of social enterprises, making it much harder to manage.
Social economy has principles and values that promote cooperation and mutual support. For that reason, in many cases social enterprises share their experiences and support each other. Under this concept, a project was announced from the state for financial support for social enterprises that will consult and train new social enterprises.
In any case, in Greece until now, the strongest support comes from peers and that is why it is essential to “give it back”, spread experiences and knowledge. For that reason, a significant part of Koukouva kinsep social work has to do with helping to understand the principles of social economy (educational activities for schools, open relevant activities, events, etc.) and supporting groups to start a social enterprise or overcome some difficulties (through decision making and group building activities, business planning, social management tools, etc.).
Enterprise`s Establishment
Koukouva kinsep is a social cooperative enterprise established in February 2019. Even though the cooperative is recently founded, the members have been cooperating with each other in different projects for many years now.
In the cooperative, there are working members, as well as members that support the idea, share the vision, but are working in different fields. All members have equal opinions and, apart from practical arrangements that may be decided by the working group, the assembly takes all decisions unanimously or if it is needed, with consent. Koukouva kinsep has strong relations with various groups and social enterprises and is always open to local or even international collaborations.
Objectives and Activities
The key principles of Koukouva kinsep is equality in decision making (deciding unanimously, no employer or employees), respect to people and the environment, as well as solidarity between people and between initiatives.
The vision is to help the world become a beautiful and safe place for everybody, through values as self-management, self-sufficiency, mutual exchange, active participation, cooperation and solidarity. Koukouva kinsep believes that these values are a part of human nature, but they often get lost in everyday life. The enterprise’s greatest objective is to reintroduce these values through education.
For that reason, Koukouva kinsep aims to cultivate a love of learning through experience and play, enriching the city’s cultural life and promoting their core principles (respect, equality, co-operation, solidarity). To do so, the enterprise organizes open events, educational activities for all ages, as well as activities between support groups and social enterprises to address a variety of issues that may be arising.
Koukouva kinsep works with the public (street work – open events), in schools (preschoolers, students, youth and adults), social entrepreneurs and unemployed people that seek other options.
Challenges
A challenge that most social cooperatives face in Greece is bureaucracy combined with the lack of knowledge in many public offices. This challenge consumes a lot of useful time, makes every simple procedure a challenge and forces each initiative aware, well informed and to address all questions. Fortunately, due to the previous knowledge of the members, Koukouva was able to overcome these issues relatively easily.
A challenge that the enterprise is working on, however, is how to be able to employ themselves with fair working conditions and be sustainable, but at the same time to offer their services to whomever needs them with little to no cost. A consulting project is offered to groups and initiatives without any cost and is part of the volunteer work of the cooperative, but now it is not possible to do the same for the educational activities.
Impact
As a recently founded cooperative Koukouva kinsep struggles to calculate the impact, they have had on the community. However, experiencing the joy the children have when taking part in the activities, listening to the children’s reflections and understanding, receiving the gratitude of teachers for the alternative inspiration to their work, as well as seeing some ideas slowly becoming initiatives gives them the strength and motivation to move on.
Lessons learnt and conditions for potential replicability
Koukouva kinsep feels it is too early to address national and international expansion of the company. However, they intend to return to this topic in the relatively near future.
Despite this, Koukouva kinsep has learned that planning is a very useful tool for them. The company has started to plan their ideas around their strengths and weaknesses, which they have evaluated, they work often on group dynamics and ensure that they reflect on this success of every project. By doing so, Koukouva kinsep is able to complete and design projects in an effective and efficient manner.