TREK is project shareholder and co-ordinator of a European Commission, ESF Article-6 initiative, budgeted for 1.3M euro.
TREK is project shareholder and co-ordinator of a European Commission, ESF Article-6 initiative, budgeted for 1.3M #. PRO-CHANGE, the project acronym, (www.e-prochange.net) aims to contribute to the management of change, in terms of enhancing readiness to respond to the economic and social restructuring. It intends to create anticipation mechanisms that will enhance the capacity of local stakeholders and actors to be timely prepared and to effectively respond to the challenges and opportunities of restructuring process. It will seek to establish collaboration frameworks at the regional and transnational level, aiming to transfer knowledge and capitalize on the lessons learnt from past ESF initiatives, while adding value to existing structures and strategies.
Project workload will develop Coordination and Support Structures, in the Greater Thessaloniki area (Greece) and in the Province of Lucca (Italy), which will faciliate the wide diffusion of good practices and will improve the coordination of change management actions.
The project addresses the issue of Change Management, bringing together all local entities of different countries that are responsible for dealing with restructuring problems in order to ensure a high level of competitiveness, viability and prosperity for their regions. The participating countries are Greece, Italy, United Kingdom and Bulgaria. The main priority issues addressed by the project are four, including:
The creation of "local partnerships" in each region in the form of Advisory Councils to connect and coordinate all relevant stakeholders and support the development of anticipation mechanisms and systems. The Structure that will be created will be used at a territorial level in order to support all regional stakeholders to deal with restructuring problems when the latter emerge.
The development of anticipation mechanisms and tools to better manage restructuring. The aim is to manage restructuring proactively so as to minimize the ultimate economic and social cost for workers, enterprises and public authorities, helping them actually to take advantage of the opportunities that may arise during the restructuring process. The identification of benchmarks will also be used to identify constructive solutions that can be adopted at a local and European level.
At the same time, the exchange of know-how between regions will help the development of integrated approaches to confront the implications of restructuring process. The transnational character of the project, the activities foreseen and the Structure that will be created will not only collect relevant information and improve the dissemination of know-how; it will also bring together regions with similar problems and facilitate thus the formulation of a single approach, that will comprise all best practices already used and incorporate also new ideas and techniques.