Economic change and development over the past few decades has particularly affected small businesses, especially in small cities. Most training programmes designed to help companies adapt to the changing economic climate have centred on the needs of the large companies but have often neglected to provide the necessary tools to help the smaller companies.

In response to this situation a project co-financed by the Leonardo da Vinci Programme, the Small City Commerce project, is meant to identify, adapt and implement diverse and innovative solutions for the small retail sector through a business training programme.

To achieve this objective the project will analyse the needs of the small commercial companies sector in small cities. From the results it will develop a training programme which will address quality management systems, knowledge management systems and the advantages of business networks. The training material will thus be aimed at managers, directors and employees of such companies operating in the services sector in the smaller cities.

An evaluation of the training plan and course materials will be carried out to ensure quality and improvement and the final results will be transferred in each of the participating countries and across the rest of Europe. It is hoped that one of the principal benefits of the programme will be the creation of network of SMEs in the independent retail sector to facilitate communication between the enterprises.

Led by the Vilareal Town Council, the project has the support of a consortium of international partners, these include Landesinitiative Neue Kommunikations Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany), IDEC SA (Greece), Federacin de Comercio de Vila-Real (Spain), FUNDECYT (Spain), INIMM (Romania), BCD (Turkey) and the Fundacin Comunidad Valenciana-Regin Europea chiefly responsible for the project awareness and dissemination campaigns at European level.

 

Small City Commerce Project EU Lifelong Learning Programme Leonardo da Vinci www.smallcitycommerce.eu

Fundacin Comunidad Valenciana-Regin Europea Juan Manuel Revuelta (Director) - jrevuelta@delcomval.be
Susana Sola - sola_sus@gva.es

Fundacin Comunidad Valenciana-Regin Europea www.uegva.info

 

News details

News type
Source
ReferNet