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Minister for Rural and Community Development, Heather Humphreys, today (29 April 2022) announced additional funding under the Dormant Accounts funded Awareness Raising Initiative for Social Enterprise (ARISE) Scheme.
Grants totalling €526,000 are being provided to social enterprises, social enterprise networks and support organisations to carry out a range of awareness raising initiatives.
Social Enterprises create jobs in rural areas and support the aims of Our Rural Future – the government’s five year strategy for revitalising rural Ireland.
Making the announcement today, Minister Humphreys said:
“I am delighted to be in a position today to announce funding to fourteen additional projects under the ARISE Scheme. Due to the tremendous response and quality of applications received under this scheme last year, a further €526,000 is now being awarded, bringing the total funding under the scheme to €1.2 million. The projects funded will further increase awareness of social enterprises and their potential.”
The Minister continued:
“This scheme will continue to play a significant part in fostering a common understanding of the value of social enterprise, and collectively empower social enterprises to have a voice and a role in raising awareness. While there has been a significant increase in the visibility of social enterprises, raising awareness is an ongoing challenge. I firmly believe this sector has the potential to grow in both scale and impact. We all need to continue to pull together to make that happen.”
ARISE Scheme Awardees 2022
A list of Awardees for the ARISE Scheme for 2022
Our Rural Future is the whole-of-government policy for rural Ireland for the period 2021-2025. It represents a new milestone in the approach to rural development policy for Ireland and adopts a more strategic, ambitious and holistic approach to investing in and maximising opportunities for rural areas.
Social enterprises are businesses that work primarily to improve the lives of people. Their core objective is to achieve a social, societal, or environmental impact. Like other businesses, social enterprises pursue their objectives by trading in goods and services on an ongoing basis.
However, surpluses generated by social enterprises are re-invested into achieving their core social objectives, rather than maximising profit for their owners. They frequently work to support disadvantaged groups such as the long-term unemployed, people with disabilities, the Traveller community, or to address issues such as food poverty, social housing, or environmental matters.
Ireland’s first National Social Enterprise Policy for Ireland 2019-2022 was launched by the Department of Rural and Community Development on 18 July 2019, with the objective of creating an enabling environment for social enterprise to grow and contribute more fully to Ireland’s social and economic progress.
The Policy is focused on three main objectives:
1. Building Awareness of Social Enterprise
2. Growing and Strengthening Social Enterprise
3. Achieving Better Policy Alignment
The Dormant Accounts Acts 2001-2012, together with the Unclaimed Life Assurance Policies Act 2003, provide a framework for the administration of unclaimed accounts in credit institutions (that is, banks, building societies and An Post) and unclaimed life assurance policies in insurance undertakings.
The main purpose of the legislation is to reunite account or policy holders with their funds in credit institutions or insurance undertakings and in this regard, these bodies are required to take steps to identify and contact the owners of dormant accounts and unclaimed life assurance policies.
However, in order to utilise the un-used funds in dormant accounts and unclaimed policies to best effect, the legislation also introduced a scheme for the disbursement of funds that are unlikely to be reclaimed from dormant accounts and unclaimed policies for the purposes of measures to assist:
1. the personal and social development of persons who are economically or socially disadvantaged;
2. the educational development of persons who are educationally disadvantaged; or
3. persons with a disability
Social Enterprises work in many ways to assist people in these categories.