Focus On: Rotterdam - how is the city building on its strengths?

The municipality of Rotterdam is trying to think differently about overcoming many of the city’s challenges by taking these 11 approaches through the USE-IT Transfer Mechanism:  

1.  Bringing together a ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ approach, where the municipality works with the community – having greater community involvement in decision making and ideas. 

2.  Developing a Local Partnership of public, commercial and social sector organisations. 

3.  Mapping of city organisations of different sizes and types. 

4.  Establishing a ‘Community Research Programme’, where members of the community can be trained as Community Researchers and bring their wealth of local knowledge and expertise to projects.  

5.  Developing tailored employment support activities, helping to match people correctly with the jobs and training that best suit their needs.  

6.  Identifying key organisations to be Social Enterprise Leaders.  

7.  Creating a Network of Social Entrepreneurs and Social Enterprises. 

8.  Mapping and identifying procurement opportunities across different organisations to encourage them to use social enterprises and to promote the sector.  

9.  Designing, developing and delivering a range of Social Enterprise business support activities, to encourage and establish more social enterprises.   

10.  Building an effective relationship with communities across different neighbourhoods. 

11.  Implementing a process of Community Economic Development planning, where the community have a much greater voice in the economic future of their local neighbourhood.  

Some of these activities build upon what Rotterdam is already doing, with others being completely new.. The Network is an excellent opportunity for Rotterdam to develop new activities, for Rotterdam to further enhance existing activities, and for Rotterdam to share its practice with Birmingham, Poznan and Trapani.  

Nathalie Noordpool, EU Project Manager at Voor Goed Rotterdam Impact Agency says:

" Passionate work and positive can-do mentality' is the phrase that comes to mind when thinking about the USE-IT project and team members.  We have the pleasure to be involved in this special project to learn from lead city Birmingham and partner cities Trapani and Poznan.  

  It is impressive to see the lead partner understanding exactly what we've done in Rotterdam and thinking albout implementing some key elements.  We hope to put together a balanced plan with focus on the important details with a clear view of the long term picture with the help of the USE-IT team."