The recently closed StarGrowth Open Call made a bang with 73 applications received before the July 26th, 17:00 CET deadline. These results came from all partner countries in the program, namely Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Romania, and Slovenia, demonstrating the reach and relevance of the exciting initiatives supported by StarGrowth.
The StarGrowth Open Call was widely promoted and had a specific interest in tourism SMEs in rural regions that were either lacking in terms of sustainability performance, digitalization and innovative practices and solutions, or more advanced in these same areas to foster knowledge transfer and to promote business cooperation. The initiative aims to support SMEs by adopting sustainable and innovative practices through tailored technical support activities and capacity building programs, as well as helping them prepare and/or generate Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) studies and Organization Environmental Footprint (OEF) studies or boost their digital activities.
The evaluation stage, assuming applications meet eligibility criteria, is expected to be fully completed by the first week of October 2023. All those interested in the program’s outcomes are encouraged to make sure they are aware of the results of the 1st Call which will be published on the StarGrowth website as well as for the yet to be announced 2nd Call.
To wrap it up: the 1st StarGrowth Open Call has been counted as a great success story given the enthusiasm proven by SMEs in rural regions across the partner countries. It has already shown what can be achieved when collaboration and innovation come together — and things are only just getting started!
Stay tuned for the 2nd StarGrowth Open Call!
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The StarGrowth project is co-funded by the European Union.
