The CommUnity project pursued five interconnected objectives across Belgium, Italy, and Norway. First, to empower adult entrepreneurs aged 35 and above and aspiring entrepreneurs with the knowledge, tools, and networks needed to integrate community welfare into their business operations and contribute actively to local resilience. Second, to reduce social and economic imbalances through flexible, high-quality adult education targeted at entrepreneurs from diverse and often disadvantaged backgrounds, including migrants, women, and residents of rural or peripheral areas. Third, to create a shared multilingual European knowledge base on community welfare initiatives, freely accessible online in four languages to the widest possible audience. Fourth, to foster social inclusion by ensuring learning opportunities were genuinely accessible to adults facing structural barriers in all three participating countries. Fifth, to strengthen transnational partnerships and cross-border knowledge sharing among organisations working in entrepreneurship support, non-formal education, and community development, generating outputs and insights that no single national partner could have produced independently.
Adult entrepreneurs across Europe, particularly owners of small and micro-enterprises, face significant and interconnected challenges relating to economic instability, social exclusion, and limited access to lifelong learning. In Belgium, Italy, and Norway, these challenges are compounded by unequal access to community welfare resources and the absence of practical frameworks that would enable businesses to integrate social responsibility into their operations. In Puglia, rural depopulation, economic fragility of micro-enterprises, and barriers faced by women entrepreneurs called for specific support. In Norway, immigrant entrepreneurs and refugees faced structural exclusion from business networks and welfare systems. In Belgium, burnout among the self-employed and limited access to entrepreneurship for migrants and women over 35 were pressing unmet needs. The CommUnity project was developed to address these gaps by equipping adult and aspiring entrepreneurs with evidence-based knowledge on community welfare practices, practical tools to embed welfare into business models, and the transnational networks needed to learn from diverse European experiences and contribute actively to the resilience of their local communities.