Interreg SIV Social Impact Vouchers

EU Interreg Central Europe

Persistent long-​term unemployment is an omnipresent challenge in many Central European countries. At the same time, public capacities to tackle this issue are limited. For this reason, the Interreg SIV project (Social Impact Vouchers, duration: March 2019 to May 2022) aims to introduce a novel instrument to increase the capacities for an incentive system for enterprises to hire long-​term unemployed people based on a voucher system. A consortium of 11 partners from 8 Central European countries are collaborating to reach stakeholders and thus to make use of private and public capital for establishing social impact funds in the partner countries. Furthermore, the partners are working on developing a voucher system that will enable the beneficiaries and employers to access the funds. The match-​making process between prospective employers and job seekers will occur via an online platform. Therefore, the impact of the project will be twofold: First, it will contribute to reducing long-​term unemployment and, at the same time, it will increase the availability of labour for enterprises. The concept was already successfully implemented in Baden-​Württemberg in a pilot project. This provides the starting point for the SIV project.

The Competence Center for Nonprofit Organisations and Social Entrepreneurship of the Vienna University of Economics and Business takes on an advisory role in accompanying the strategy development process. In a future step, the competence center will be in charge of evaluating the program upon its implementation in the partner countries.