Strengthening cooperatives in the Mediterranean area, increasing their competitiveness at the international level, while promoting local development, is the main objective of the ICS project, included in the European MED program, of which the University of Algarve through the CRIA-Divisão of Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer is one of the national partners.
The project is in its final stage and left the seed for the region's economic fabric to grow and become more competitive. In the Algarve case, associations and companies were also involved, given the small number of cooperatives.
O «ICS – SMEs and the Cooperative Economy for Local Development» bet on innovation, competitiveness, clusters and internationalization, focusing on the sectors of Agriculture, Tourism, Fisheries and Environment. It involves ten entities from five countries (Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece) and there is another Portuguese partner, Instituto Pedro Nunes.
Basically, as CRIA describes, the «eight transnational working groups, made up of key actors (public and private) from each participating region» aim to «find a “clusterization” model for MED cooperatives».
The coordinator of the ICS Eurídice Cristo project at CRIA and Lélia Madeira from Tertúlia Algarvia spoke with CRIA FM, at Rádio Universitária do Algarve RUA FM, to take stock of the project.
“This project is bearing fruit. The ICS does not have miraculous solutions for the problems, but it opens possibilities to start doing something and give opportunities to companies and local communities to explore some paths», summarized Eurídice Cristo.
“The balance is very positive, the project even exceeded my personal expectations. One of the great results of this project is the fact that we managed to create a European association for the promotion of the cooperative economy in the Mediterranean area, which is called Medcoop», he said.
An association that «will continue much of the work carried out within the scope of the ICS» and will also be at the service of cooperatives, companies and associations in the Algarve. Two regional entities, Tertúlia Algarvia and In Loco, already belong to this international association.
The MED European Program is financed by ERDF funds and covers, in Portugal, the Algarve and Alentejo regions. CRIA manages several projects that will seek funding for this program, many of them linked to innovation and entrepreneurship, with the dynamization of the local economy as the main objective.
Link between Tourism, Agriculture and Environment was in the spotlight
«In the Algarve, we focused a lot on the connection between Tourism, Agriculture and the Environment, more specifically on the promotion of local products, on the promotion of regional tourism, such as ecotourism and rural tourism, which stimulate local production and services related,” explained the ICS coordinator.
«We were quite curious and a little apprehensive, as the cooperative economy and, more specifically, the cooperatives in the Algarve, are not large in number and many of them have management models that are already quite outdated», revealed Eurídice Cristo.
Although there are around 10 registered cooperatives in the Algarve, in these three areas, only around XNUMX responded to the contact made by CRIA.
The CRIA technician also pointed out that "there is a great lack of knowledge on the part of the population in general about what a cooperative is." In Portugal, the cooperative system is closely associated with the agricultural sector, but these can exist in practically all sectors of activity.
“Based on these premises, and taking into account the identified conditions, we proposed to work not only with cooperatives, but also – and perhaps even more so – with associations and even some companies,” said Eurídice Cristo.
Some Algarve associations wore the shirt
An association that played an important role was In Loco, an association that has “long experience in promoting local development activities”. Various cooperatives were also contacted, such as CACIAL and there was also an approach to Tertúlia Algarvia «due to the promotion they make of the region's products and of the entire Algarve culture»
A good example of this work is the Algarteca project, which is showing online, free of charge, typical Algarve recipes on video, as well as promoting the places where these gastronomic gems of the region originated.
Despite being an association, Lélia Madeira considers that Tertúlia Algarvia would even have the vocation to be a cooperative, since «the management is, in a way, done as if it were a cooperative».
«Tertúlia started out as a group of friends who wanted to promote the culture of the Algarve, in particular Gastronomy. We thought it would make perfect sense to join this European cooperative, Medcoop, precisely because it has the same vision as us: to promote local products», he explained.
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