The Emprende e Integra project, driven by Incubadora CON VALORES and co-financed by the European Social Fund Plus through CEPES, brings together hundreds of participants and promotes a new way of collective entrepreneurship that combines social inclusion, sustainability, and economic development
What if the best opportunity to start a business were not doing it alone, but joining forces with other people who share the same desire to move forward?
In Valencia, this idea is starting to take shape. 36 participants in the Emprende e Integra project have decided to bring together their knowledge, experiences, and abilities to set up their own social economy entities, betting on a business model in which success is measured not only by economic benefits, but also by the positive impact it generates in society.
The initiative, driven by the Incubadora CON VALORES and co-financed by the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) through the Spanish Confederation of Social Economy Businesses (CEPES), within the ÉFESO Programme, seeks to open up new opportunities for socio-employment inclusion for people in situations of vulnerability through entrepreneurship and the creation of sustainable organizations.
From "I start a business" to "we transform"
In March of this year, Incubadora CON VALORES was already showing how entrepreneurship was helping hundreds of migrant women and vulnerable people build new economic opportunities in Valencia.
Now, the Emprende e Integra project takes one more step: moving from individual entrepreneurship to the collective creation of companies and organizations with a social purpose, says Melquiades Lozano, president and co-founder of Incubadora CON VALORES.
Of the 189 participants in the programme, 36 have taken the step of grouping together to develop joint initiatives, combining their abilities to build projects that respond to real needs in their environment.
This model proposes something more than sharing responsibilities. It seeks to enable people who, individually, find it difficult to start a business to add knowledge, resources, and opportunities to develop stronger organizations.
Because, sometimes, the key to moving forward is not in having more resources, but in finding the right people with whom to build.
Companies that not only seek profits, but solutions
The project bets on the creation of social economy entities capable of generating a triple contribution: economic, social and environmental.
Its aim is to promote associations that develop viable activities and, at the same time, contribute to addressing social needs, generating employment opportunities, and strengthening the local economic fabric.
In addition, Emprende e Integra pays special attention to those who already have skills or carry out economic activities informally, but find barriers to turning them into sustainable businesses.
Through professional mentoring, the program facilitates their transition to the formal economy, providing them with tools to structure their initiatives and move toward their consolidation.
Much more than training: support all the way to setting up the entity
One of the particular features of the project is that it does not limit itself to teaching how to start a business.
Emprende e Integra supports the promoter teams in the necessary steps to transform a collective idea into an association with real capacity to function.
The process includes the preparation of the viability plan, the definition of the social value proposition, and advice on legal incorporation procedures, such as drafting the bylaws, the founding act, and registration in the corresponding public registries.
Support continues during the so-called seed phase, a decisive stage in which new entities need to lay the foundations for their operations and sustainability.
To this end, the project has volunteer professionals who share their experience in key areas such as preparing technical reports of projects, participating in public tenders, and diversifying funding sources.
The aim is for the new associations not to permanently depend on external mentoring, but to acquire the necessary skills to carry out their activity independently and sustainably.