39.1. Short description In the summer of 2011, several so-called “work corporations” (werkcorporaties) started operating in the municipality of Nijmegen. These work corporations aim at re-employing social assistance (Wet Werk en Bijstand, or WWB) receivers with a considerable distance from the labour market by offering them a place where they can combine work and education.…
40.1. Short description Housing corporation Portaal, together with the municipality of Nijmegen, started the project “A Future for Everybody” in 2009 because the province (Gelderland) reserved money for the development of “innovative living arrangements” within a larger programme. It was not stated clearly what was meant by “innovative living arrangements”, but the focus had to…
41.1. Short description In 2009, three Moroccan fathers in Nijmegen saw that successful “neighbourhood father” projects were running in other cities in the Netherlands. Together with a local welfare worker from Tandem Welfare they visited such a project in The Hague to see how it was organised. The fathers thought that such an initiative could…
Sustainability Although all innovations were, at least at the start, dependent on public funding, an explicit wish exists among members of all three projects to continue even if financial resources dry up. However, this urge to be self-sufficient was driven by different logic. Work corporations would prefer to earn revenues of their own because the…
51.1. Short description “La Mina”, a neighbourhood built on the outskirts of Barcelona in the 1970s and segregated from the rest of the city, was designed to house a population with minimal resources that had been living in various settlements of shantytowns in Barcelona. Historically, the neighbourhood has suffered from significant shortages in terms of…
52.1. Short description An increasingly serious social problem in recent years has been the growth in the number of young people dropping out of school but remaining outside of the labour market, and who, for various reasons, lack work habits, discipline and responsibility. This population has been dubbed “the NEET generation” (not in education, employment…
53.1. Short description The Citizens’ Agreement for an Inclusive Barcelona1 is the result of the 2005-10 Municipal Plan for Social Inclusion that was approved in Barcelona in March 2005. This plan provided the framework for municipal policies aimed at preventing the social exclusion of individuals and groups and the promotion of participation. The Citizens’ Agreement…
Each of the projects presented has certain specific characteristics. For this reason, we will look at impact, sustainability and the possibility of diffusion in each of the projects individually. Impact Case 1: Urban revitalisation: the La Mina Transformation Plan The PTBM has had a significant impact on neighbourhood revitalisation, in terms of both urban and…
Local background of the social innovations Over time, a strongly left-wing political culture emerged in Nijmegen. Its key values related to the protection of the less well off: solidarity, equal opportunities to participate in society and the urge for an “undivided” city. Over the past few years, a fear of increasing divisions between residents in…