PIE NEWS

Summary

The overall ambition of the PIE News project is to foster the emergence of commonfare as an alternative economic model to fight poverty, a condition affecting some 25% of the European population. Commonfare is a new collaborative form of welfare provision based on equitable governance and grassroots democracy. It entails the involvement of diverse stakeholders to facilitate the bottom-up arousal of collective practices tackling the needs of the new poor (precarious workers, working poor, NEETs, people left behind by safety nets). The consortium will achieve this goal through a Collective Awareness Platform (CAPS) which (a) informs people about existing welfare state provisions, (b) provides them with the means to share good practices on how to handle poverty-related issues, and (c) supports their abilities to network and to sustain real-life value. The project pioneers commonfare as a new social innovation goal by raising collective awareness on the threats connected to Poverty, lack of Income, and unEmployment (‘PIE conditions’), thus empowering the new poor and enabling the relevant stakeholders, e.g. polivcy makers, to tackle such threats more effectively. Three pilot actions (in Croatia, Italy, and the Netherlands) will drive the design and implementation of the PIE News project, triggering a public engagement process. PIE NEWS capitalizes on the collective power and skills of the ‘new poor’ promoting commonfare through actions that increase collective awareness on PIE Conditions. Such actions will be supported by an extensive dissemination strategy, including, e. g., open calls for the organization of bottom-up networking events. The PIE News platform will innovate the CAPS domain not only in terms of target population and, public design approach, but also by combining a reputation system as a way to remunerate labour with a digital currency as a mean of acquisition of good and services within and outside the platform.