The project GRAPE “Local Social Green Action Plan for small and peripheral territories”, in co-financed by the European Commission within the Single Market program (SMP-COSME), it kicked-off in May 2022 and it will end in October 2023. It involves 4 small European Municipalities from rural, mountain and insular areas: Malegno (IT), Mirabella Imbaccari (IT), Bonares (ES), Sifnos (EL). Each Municipality is supported  by a local social and solidarity economy (SSE) actor: Sol.Co Camunia (Malegno), Fondazione di Comunità di Messina (Mirabella Imbaccari), COOPINTE (Bonares), Wind of Renewal (Sifnos). These local partnerships are further supported by a European network, REVES – European Network Of Cities And Regions For The Social Economy and by FAECTA, the Andalusian cooperatives’ network. Such Consortium is led by Fondazione di Comunità di Messina.The project aims at identifying and promoting resilient strategies to tackle economic, energetic and climatic crises at a local level and pave the way to a sustainable and fair green and digital transition, developing local solutions to local needs. In this context, Social and Solidarity-based Economy contribute to the “territorial resilience” through the experimentation of innovative solidarity-based solutions mobilising local stakeholders to cooperate and use their resources to adapt to challenges they are facing.

Three phases

GRAPE developes in three phases. In the first one, partners will be engaged in three Social Economy Mission (SEM), the first one in Mirabella (July 2022), then Sifnos (September 2022) and Bonares (November 2022). Peer-learning activities and case-studies analysis will provide the necessary conditions for a fruitful cooperation among partners. Each Mission will have sessions dedicated to the presentation of techniques for drafting a sound local Action Plan and to the sharing of good practices in the involved territories, so as to allow for possible synergies among partners and the replicability of a specific practice in different territories.

During the second phase, partners will be involved in the drafting of local Action Plans for social and environmental resilience for each partner territory. Action Plans’ contents move stem from suggestions elaborated during the Missions; participative methodologies will be used in their drafting in order to engage local stakeholders, including also Social and Solidarity Economy actors and civil society organizations.

The third and last phase consists in the co-construction of a digital toolkit that moving from the experience gathered during the project, shall work as a guiding manual for small Municipalities interested in replicating the process followed by the partners during the shared drafting of Local Action Plans for the green and social transition and the promotion of the territories’ resilience.