Founders of social start-ups – so-called social entrepreneurs – have a one-stop contact point in Schleswig-Holstein: the yooweedoo programme. Based at Kiel University, yooweedoo facilitates social entrepreneurship with workshops, project advice, an ideas competition and an active network for sharing lessons learned.
Category: Local economic development
German city of Wiesbaden: sustainable logistics to make the city more liveable
Wiesbaden has taken an ambitious approach to make urban logistics more sustainable. Based on a political resolution, it has embarked on a three-phase journey, tackling delivery zones, emission-free transport and restructuring delivery services.
Strengthening Local Economic Development
In the framework of the “Municipal know-how for host communities in the Middle-East programme”, the international community of practice Connective Cities and its initiators, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, the German Association of Cities (DST) and Engagement Global gGmbH / Service Agency Communities in One World (SKEW), organized an International Dialogue Event on “Strengthening Local Economic Development” in Lebanon, that was held in Beirut on October 24-26, 2017. The workshop addressed urban practitioners from Lebanon and Germany to share good practices and learn from each other.
Given the impacts of economic globalisation on local development worldwide, local governments play a crucial role in enabling more sustainable growth of urban areas. Local Economic Development (LED) is particularly important when it comes to strengthening the capacity of individual cities and regions to foster their resilience under the pressure of growing global competition. The LED approach encourages establishment of multi-actor partnerships and ensures joint development of local solutions to the existing economic challenges. Through multi-stakeholder dialogues as well as thorough analyses of current economic situations and conditions of public services and infrastructure at local level, LED helps identify concrete development opportunities and create competitive business locations at local level. This consequently can lead to a reduction in poverty as well as geographic disparities and enable sustainable economic growth.
The dialogue event was geared specifically towards supporting the analysis and planning of local economic development based on good practices up to the formulation of ideas for local projects to foster the local economy. Discussion of good practices that are relevant to the local urban context in Lebanon followed by peer-to-peer advice on actual challenges in a creative and interactive workshop environment constituted the main features of the event.
Subjects of exchange comprised
- Improvement of municipal infrastructure and public services;
- Development of local marketing concepts and sectoral economic strategies;
- Enhancement of innovation and value chains in a context of regional urban-rural linkages
- Provision of learning opportunities for entrepreneurs and integration of the informal sector
Social entrepreneurship enriches municipalities
At the virtual dialogue event held on 20, 21 and 23 September 2021, over 45 participants from 10 countries took a look at social entrepreneurship from a range of municipal perspectives. They found that this rather new target group for local business development has a great deal of potential for municipalities. Innovative examples from Kiel, the municipality hosting the virtual event, as well as from the UK and Uganda, showcased the wide range of funding opportunities and the great benefits that can arise when municipalities and social entrepreneurs work together.
So far, many municipalities have given barely any thought to social entrepreneurship. The dialogue event provided them with a good first impression. The international dialogue and examples from around the world also inspired many participants to take concrete action to promote social entrepreneurship.
Kiel – the true champion of social entrepreneurship
The German City of Kiel is committed to the Agenda 2030 with its 17 SDGs. The sustainibility price in 2021 helped pave the way. Kiel is a true champion of social entrepreneurship promotion. Many sustainability projects evolved with the support of the city and its people. The video presents four outstanding examples from the local entrepreneur scene.
Watch the video at YouTube:
A market crèche in Kenya – enhancing economic security and social life for mothers
In Tharaka-Nithi County,, which is east of Mount Kenya, women usually stop working for about six months when they have a baby. Women who trade in the market face problems as they lose customers, sometimes even their stalls are given to other people and they have to start from scratch. In the market of Chuka town, where 90 % of the approximately 3000 traders are women, the municipality has set up a crèche for these women. The care is free of charge for them. This is a good practice that can easily be transferred to other markets, provided the traders are involved in the design of the crèche from the beginning.
Watch video at YouTube: https://youtu.be/O9Y3KdzD9M4
Strengthening the Partnership between Local Cities and Tourism Industry
Tourism is one of the most affected economic sectors globally due to COVID-19, with declining numbers of visitors severely impacting local economies. There have been business closures, job losses, a rise in unsustainable alternative income sources, and the loss of government revenue from tourism. However, the dire situation has also led many tourism-dependent countries to explore new opportunities as part of the COVID-19 recovery strategy. These include new products such as eco-tourism, technology-based/ digital tourism, innovative marketing, and domestic tourism. Amidst this challenging situation and potential opportunities, there is a need to look for a strategy and projects to support the tourism industry.
We are pleased to invite you to the first workshop of the virtual series on COVID-19 and Municipal Tourism Recovery: Strengthening the partnership between Local Cities and Tourism Industry on 15th September 2021 at 16:00 – 18:00 CEST.
The event is aimed at international municipal actors from local administrations, civil society, business and academia who are working on the impacts of COVID-19 on the tourism sector and looking for innovative strategies for a post-pandemic future.
Connective Cities’ COVID-19 and Municipal Tourism Recovery will support participating urban practitioners in devising ways to help the tourism industry survive. It will provide a broad knowledge sharing and peer learning platform with like-minded municipal actors and local government policymakers who work on tourism recovery planning. Additionally, the Connective Cities Community provides access to relevant global expertise on tourism to support the planning and recovery process.
The kick-off event on September 15 offers the opportunity for several urban practitioners and the tourism industry to work on COVID-19 tourism recovery through peer learning and preparing potential proposals for soliciting funding. As a starting point, various scenarios from municipalities from five countries – Nepal, Botswana, Cape Verde, Romania, Uganda, and Cambodia – will be introduced.
Further workshops of the series are planned for the 20th of October and 16th of November 2021 (to be confirmed).
To register for the workshop and stay updated on the agenda, the announcement of speakers and further details, please visit our Connective Cities Community.
COVID-19 and Municipal Tourism Recovery Kick-Off Event:
Date: 15th of September 2021
Time: 16:00 – 18:00 CEST (Berlin Time)
Venue: Connective Cities Community (online)
Event Language: English, simultaneous translation: Arabic, Portuguese, (Romanian tbc.)
Contact: Paulina Koschmieder paulina.koschmieder@giz.de
Research of good practices on the subject of health, business, and governance at municipal level during the COVID-19 pandemic
The report aims to explore municipal initiatives and measures taken to address health, governance, and business sector challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The report is structured as follows:
The first part reviews the methodology of country identification for further investigation of good practices at national and city level.
The second, third, and fourth parts consist of good practices in the areas of health, governance, and business during the COVID-19 pandemic, including data analysis in selected countries and a brief overview of municipal practices in response to COVID-19. Good practices were selected from low and medium income countries from Africa, Asia and Southeast Europe.
In the final section, the cities’ challenges and recommendations for Connective Cities are reviewed and conclusions regarding the research findings are also presented.
Space-blind strategies don’t work for COVID-19
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recently analysed how cities have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. Soo-Jin Kim, Head of the OECD’s Urban Policies and Reviews Unit, calls for locally-adapted solutions now and for the post-COVID era.
Since March 2020, local health authorities have often dominated the headlines. Citizens’ trust in local politicians has significantly increased. Which role have municipalities played so far in responding to the COVID 19 crisis?
Soo-Jin Kim: Since the very beginning of the pandemic, municipalities have not waited for national governments to tell them what to do – they started to act immediately. They have deployed a range of measures to inform the public about necessary measures, ensure that people comply with social distancing and lockdown rules, support the shift to tele-working and take care of the most vulnerable such as the elderly and the poor. They have also worked to keep basic public services running, including the health system, and help the local economy survive the crisis. So I would describe municipalities as ‘essential workers’.
In addition, regardless of the crisis, we should not forget that municipalities are always key public actors. Subnational governments are responsible for an average of 40 per cent of all public spending across OECD countries. In federal states such as Germany or Switzerland, it’s even 50 to 60 per cent!
New working groups in the MENA network: Municipal recovery from the pandemic
Following the intensive knowledge-exchange program on municipal response to the pandemic that was conducted in 2020 to support the Connective Cities network in MENA, several working groups are being established to sustain the results of the peer learning activities. The working groups consist of municipal representatives and partners from the business sector, civil society, and academia. From a thematic standpoint, the topics under focus are:
- Waste management and circular economy
- Digitalisation for resilient cities
- Biodiversity and environmental protection (kick-off event: August 9, 2021)
- Crisis management in Palestinian municipalities
- Social entrepreneurship and local economic development (kick-off event: August 12,2021)
Several meetings and preparatory activities have been conducted to formulate the road map of each working group. The core working group on ‘biodiversity and environmental protection’ has developed and submitted a concept note to the EU Call for Proposals on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Protection in Lebanon. In order to be eligible for this call, an effective consortium was established under the umbrella of Connective Cities network. The consortium members included Saint Joseph University (represented by Dr. Jocelyne Gerard and Dr. Zaarour), Green Line environmental NGO (represented by Dr. Ali Darwish), and Menjez municipality (represented by its Mayor Dr. Georges Yousef). Other potential local authorities’ beneficiaries include Beit Meri, Jezzine, Al Buhayra Union of municipalities, which will join at a later stage of the project.
We are looking forward to include new members to these working groups. If you would like to be an active member of these working groups, please contact us at: muna.shalan@giz.de