Klaipėdos universitetas

Social entrepreneurship serves as one of the social techniques for the social cohesion of disadvantaged and marginalised groups in society, and therefore can be used as a practical method in the field of social work. Social entrepreneurship provides an operational platform for the renewal of people’s self-dependence skills, by learning to do things together, which is a relevant motivational aspect for socially marginalised people in solving their social and personal problems. Thus, the social cohesion of disadvantaged and marginalised groups of society by being involved in social entrepreneurial activities, and thus being placed in the sphere of the productive economy at the level of the community, contributes to the development of the local community, giving citizens the socially active status of being active protagonists in their destiny and their local community. However, the renewal of a person’s social functioning, achieved by involvement in social entrepreneurial activities, covers a person’s life holistically, starting with the person’s inner processes that lead to forming external social relationships. Therefore, the analysis of this process in the article involves taking an anthropological perspective on activating people’s inner resources and human potential in the activities of social enterprises, which also shows the dimension of social entrepreneurship as a tool for personal development. The aim of the article is to explore the phenomenon and practice of social entrepreneurship in the context of social work, where social entrepreneurship can be used as an innovative approach as a tool for the development of the community, and for the transformation on a personal level of practitioners and people involved in entrepreneurial activities.

The ar­ti­cle ad­vo­cates the prin­ci­ples of So­cial Econ­omy (SE) as pos­si­bil­ity to de­velop in­no­va­tive so­cial tech­nolo­gies for the so­cial co­he­sion of so­ci­ety in situa­tion of eco­nomic break­down. The con­cept of So­cial Econ­omy can be con­sid­ered as Eu­ro­pean tra­di­tion and chal­l­enge for ap­ply­ing and find­ing sus­tain­able forms of so­cial in­clu­sion on na­tional level. The purpose and the ob­­ject of the study is to in­ves­ti­gate, which spheres and prin­ci­ples of SE are evi­dent in the ac­tivi­ties of com­mu­nity ini­tia­tives in Lat­via thus es­tab­lish­ing the rec­og­ni­tion level of con­cep­tual un­der­stand­ing and prac­tice of So­cial Econ­omy in na­tional con­text among the Third Sec­tor ac­tivi­ties in Lat­via and spe­ci­fi­cally non-profit move­ments. The overview of selected community initiatives showed there are initiatives that could be (1) placed in the sphere of productive economy on the scale of a community (2) by the very marginal people involved in initiatives, (3) administered as small businesses, (4) controlled by the people involved with democratic means of decision-making and (5) supported by social services and social workers, in order to overcome social exclusion.

The goal of the article is to describe the contribution of ecclesial or Church communities to the development of community work and the ways people get involved in community activities, seeing ecclesial communities as form of religious capital in society for regenerating the society and individuals. In the richness of community activities of Christian Church that are socially or caritatively-oriented, it is possible to find resources, with which the Christian Church can reach the people in need and fulfil its mission. Thus, the context of the article is the practical concept of Caritative Social Work being practiced in practical domains of modern social protection system. One of the factors, chosen for studying in this article, will be religious capital with its inner constituting conditions in order there could take place their activation in community environment. The task here is to explore specific social and religious factors and principles of action that would provide more full understanding about the effectiveness of functioning of local religious communities and their influence on community development. The article will end by case study analysis of two Christian ecclesial communities and deriving working principles, finding out which elements and principles of ecclesial community can constitute the effective community of social rehabilitation.