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SIMRA

SIMRA - Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas

SIMRA is a European funded project on Social Innovation in Marginalized Rural Areas.

Social innovation (SI) has rapidly expanded in the research and policy debate as it aims to address urgent societal challenges and increase human wellbeing, responding to social demands that markets or existing institutions do not traditionally address. By the creation of re-configured social arrangements or networks between diverse actors, SI can introduce new solutions to challenges faced by rural areas that can re-invent their role and their capacity to innovate

SIMRA main aim is to better understand the driving forces and the enabling environment of social innovation (SI) and innovative governance in agriculture, forestry and rural development, and how to boost them, in marginalized rural areas (MRA) across Europe and around the Mediterranean, including non-EU countries.

This objective will be achieved by developing: a novel theoretical framework to define and understand SI in MRA, identifying key factors of SI development trajectories; an evaluative toolkit able to assess social innovation and its impacts in selected case studies across the target region. Furthermore, the project will develop improved knowledge of determinants of success in order to answer the question of how to support enhanced governance and SIs, addressing specificities and priorities of social needs and new social relationships and collaborations.

Link to SIMRA website

Project duration: April 2016 - March 2020
Project status:
Funding:
Societal Challenge (Horizon 2020 /EU funding /Project)
Total project budget: €5,935,828.75
Institute: Institute for Regional Development

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social innovation governance regional development

Scientific Publications

Journal article2024

Women-Led Social Innovation Initiatives Contribute to Gender Equality in Rural Areas: Grounded Theory on Five Initiatives From Three Continents

Sarkki S, Ludvig A, Fransala J, Melnykovych M, Živojinović I, Ravazzoli E, Bengoumi M, Nijnik M,

Cristina Dalla Torre, Elisa Ravazzoli

Ensuring gender equality is an important development challenge, especially in rural areas, where women are often marginalized by economic, socio-cultural and policy structures. Women-Led Social Innovation Initiatives (WLSIIs) are a promising way to address this challenge, but their contributions to gender equality depend on complex interactions between marginalizing structures and agency of women. The objective of this paper is to examine how the relevant elements of agency enable WLSIIs to contribute to progress towards gender equality in rural areas. We examine five WLSIIs located in Canada, Italy, Lebanon, Morocco, and Serbia. The cases focus on employment, education, identity, gender roles, and rural development, and are analyzed by grounded theory. We identified 1) gendered identity, 2) (in)dependence of women, and 3) control of women over the “rules of the game” as structural features that can enable or constrain WLSIIs. These concepts are located between grand societal structures (policy, economy, culture, and social organization) and women’s concrete, everyday realities, and as such helped us to understand factors supporting or hindering women’s agency and well-being. We identified women’s self-confidence, women-to-women networks, and self-developed and externally supported capacity as the key elements enabling agency. All these together increased social acceptance of the examined WLSIIs, helping to overcome cultural prejudices and gendered stereotypes. For example, women-to-women networks and self-organization increased economic independence, which reduced skepticism towards “new” roles of women and even changed unequal political dynamics. We conclude that women’s collective agency can be enabled by WLSIIs in diverse geographical and cultural contexts and should be recognized by policymakers as a key mechanism that has great potential for enhancing gender equality and overcoming structures marginalizing rural women.

DOI Source

DOI: 10.2478/euco-2024-0028

Journal article2021

Can Social Innovation Make a Change in European and Mediterranean Marginalized Areas? Social Innovation Impact Assessment in Agriculture, Fisheries, Forestry, and Rural Development

Ravazzoli E, Dalla Torre C, Da Re R, Marini Govigli V, Secco L, Górriz-Mifsud E, Pisani E, Barlagne C,

Cristina Dalla Torre, Thomas Streifeneder, Elisa Ravazzoli

Social innovation (SI) impacts are long-term changes that affect different dimensions of territorial capital (i.e., economy, society, environment, governance) for the territory in which SI occurs. Yet, systematic empirical evidence and theoretically sound assessments of the impacts of SI are scarce. This paper aims to fill the gap and assess the different aspects of SI’s impacts in European and Mediterranean areas that are characterized by marginalization processes. To assess the impacts of SI in marginalized areas, we use the evaluation framework developed within the Social Innovation in Marginalized Rural Areas (SIMRA) Horizon 2020 project and apply it to nine SI initiatives related to the fields of agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and rural development. Our findings show that SI produces cross-sectoral (societal, economic, environmental, and governmental) and multi-level impacts (on individuals, community, and society), which have improved the societal well-being, and contributed to the reduction of certain forms of marginality, mainly inside the territory in which SI occurred.

DOI Source

DOI: 10.3390/su13041823

Journal article2021

Reconstructive Social Innovation Cycles in Women-Led Initiatives in Rural Areas

Sarkki S, Dalla Torre C, Fransala J, Živojinović I, Ludvig A, Górriz-Mifsud E, Melnykovych M, Sfeir PR,

Cristina Dalla Torre, Elisa Ravazzoli

Social innovations can tackle various challenges related to gender equity in rural areas, especially when such innovations are initiated and developed by women themselves. We examine cases located in rural areas of Canada, Italy, Lebanon, Morocco, and Serbia, where women are marginalized by gender roles, patriarchal values, male dominated economy and policy, and lack of opportunities for education and employment. Our objective is to analyze five case studies on how women-led social innovation processes can tackle gender equity related challenges manifested at the levels of everyday practice, institutions, and cognitive frames. The analyses are based on interviews, workshops, literature screening, and are examined via the qualitative abductive method. Results summarize challenges that rural women are facing, explore social innovation initiatives as promising solutions, and analyze their implications on gender equity in the five case studies. Based on our results we propose a new concept: reconstructive social innovation cycle. It refers to is defined as cyclical innovation processes that engage women via civil society initiatives. These initiatives reconstruct the existing state of affairs, by questioning marginalizing and discriminative practices, institutions, and cognitive frames that are often perceived as normal. The new concept helps with to assessing the implications that women-led social innovations have for gender equity.

DOI Source

DOI: 10.3390/su13031231

Inbook2020

La donna e l’agricoltura sociale come motori dell’innovazione nei Bauernhof altoatesini

Dalla Torre C, Gramm V

Cristina Dalla Torre

l contributo analizza il ruolo di agency della donna nella trasformazione delle funzioni dei Bauernhof altoatesini, che diventano sociali ed educative attraverso l’integrazione di attività di agricoltura sociale, quale l’assistenza all’infanzia di bambini dai 0 ai 4 anni. Dallo studio è emerso che l’evoluzione del Bauernhof ha determinato una trasformazione dei ruoli di genere nello stesso. Nello studio viene utilizzato il quadro teorico dell’innovazione sociale nelle aree rurali marginalizzate sviluppato nel progetto europeo H2020 SIMRA applicato al caso studio della cooperativa sociale “Imparare, crescere, vivere con le donne contadine”. Nel caso studio sono state condotte un totale di dodici interviste qualitative a contadine che offrono il servizio e a esperti interni ed esterni all’iniziativa. Ne è emerso un punto di discussione aperto sul sovraccarico lavorativo delle contadine che intraprendono l’attività di agricoltura sociale. Il contributo trae alcune conclusioni sull’apporto dei Bauernhof che offrono assistenza all’infanzia nelle aree rurali in termini di efficientamento e aumento della qualità dei servizi sociali, in un contesto di cambiamenti socioeconomici e di politiche di welfare.

Der Beitrag analysiert die Rolle der Frau auf Bauerhöfen in Südtirol, welche soziale und pädagogische Maßnahmen der sozialen Landwirtschaft, wie die Betreuung von Kleinkindern zwischen 0 und 4 Jahren, in die bäuerliche Tätigkeit integriern. Die Studie hat ergeben, dass diese Entwicklung eine Veränderung der Geschlechterrollen auf den Bauerhöfen mit sich gebracht hat. In der Studie wird die im EU-Projekt H2020 SIMRA entwickelte Theorie der sozialen Innovation in marginalisierten ländlichen Räumen auf die Sozialgenossenschaft „Mit Bäuerinnen lernen – wachsen – leben“ angewandt. Im Rahmen der Fallstudie sind zwölf qualitative Interviews geführt worden, sowohl mit Bäuerinnen, die diesen Dienst versehen, als auch mit Fachleuten innerhalb und außerhalb der Initiative. Dabei stellt die übermäßige Arbeitsbelastung der Bäuerinnen, die eine Tätigkeit der sozialen Landwirtschaft beginnen, einen offenen Diskussionspunkt dar. Die Analyse enthält auch einige Schlussfolgerungen über den Beitrag, den Bauernhöfe mit einer Kinderbetreuung im ländlichen Raum zur Qualitäts- und Effizienzsteigerung der Sozialdienste in einem Kontext der ökosozialen Veränderungen und neuer Wohlfahrtspolitiken leisten können.

DOI Source

DOI: 10.13124/9788860461759_12

All Publications

Women-Led Social Innovation Initiatives Contribute to Gender Equality in Rural Areas: Grounded Theory on Five Initiatives From Three Continents
Sarkki S, Ludvig A, Fransala J, Melnykovych M, Živojinović I, Ravazzoli E, Bengoumi M, Nijnik M, Dalla Torre C, Górriz-Mifsud E, Labidi A, Sfeir P, López Marco L, Valero D, Joyce K, Chorti H
(2024)
Journal article
European Countryside

More information: https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/euco-2024-0028

https://doi.org/10.2478/euco-2024-0028

The Alps as a laboratory to study eco-feminist perspectives: aka how a researcher encounters gender issues in her journey
Dalla Torre C, Piccoli A (2023)
Presentation/Speech

Conference: Information Day under the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW67) - UNEP -Bridging the gender gap in rural mountainous regions - challenges| digitalization as one opportunity | online : 7.3.2023 - 7.3.2023

Can Social Innovation Make a Change in European and Mediterranean Marginalized Areas? Social Innovation Impact Assessment in Agriculture, Fisheries, Forestry, and Rural Development
Ravazzoli E, Dalla Torre C, Da Re R, Marini Govigli V, Secco L, Górriz-Mifsud E, Pisani E, Barlagne C, Baselice A, Bengoumi M, Dijskhoorn-Dekker M, Labidi A, Lopolito A, Melnykovych M, Perlik M, Polman N, Sarkki S, Vassilopoulos A, Koundouri P, Miller D, Streifeneder T, Nijnik M (2021)
MDPI AG
Journal article
Sustainability

More information: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su13041823

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13041823

https://hdl.handle.net/10863/15953

Our partners

European Forest Institute

Eastern Norway Research Institute, Lillehammer

Schweizerische Arbeitsgemeinschaft für die Berggebiete

ÖAR-Regionalberatung GmbH

Università degli Studi di Padova

Federal Institute of Agricultural Economics

Project Team

Elisa Ravazzoli

Project Manager

Thomas Streifeneder

Vice Manager

Clare Giuliani

Team Member

Stefania Lochmann

Cristina Dalla Torre

Christian Hoffmann

Scientific Advisory Board

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Inbook2020

La donna e l’agricoltura sociale come motori dell’innovazione nei Bauernhof altoatesini

Dalla Torre C, Gramm V

Cristina Dalla Torre

DOI Source

DOI: 10.13124/9788860461759_12

SIMRA