Projects

APOLLO – territoriAl corPorate weLfare through digitalization and cOoperation

The Alpine region is undergoing profound social and structural transformations: an ageing population, changing work environments, and the increasing demand for digital solutions in everyday life. Against this backdrop, the APOLLO project—funded by the Interreg Alpine Space programme—develops forward-looking strategies to strengthen corporate welfare and social sustainability across the region. With a strong emphasis on innovation, cooperation, and regional resilience, APOLLO connects key actors to jointly shape the future of work and care in the Alpine space, taking on these challenges.

By fostering close collaboration between public administrations, research institutions, businesses, and other stakeholders, the project supports the exchange of best practices and the implementation of new technologies. Key focus areas include demographic challenges, the introduction of digital care models (such as telecare), flexible work and time arrangements, and the strengthening of small and medium-sized enterprises in rural regions.

Pilot initiatives aim to test innovative solutions and generate policy recommendations that can enhance coordination between legal frameworks and practices across the Alpine countries. The interdisciplinary project consortium includes partners from Germany, Austria, Italy, and Slovenia representing public administrations, research institutions and foundations, supported by a group of observers ensuring that results are broadly disseminated to the public.

Germany is represented in the project by the Steinbeis Transfer Centre for Social and Technological Innovation and the Ministry of Social Affairs, Health and Integration of Baden-Württemberg. So far, we have already gained valuable insights through focus group discussions and workshops. These have helped identify concrete needs and demands that will inform the development of pilot actions. These actions are intended to support and ensure the quality of outpatient long-term care, relieve caregivers, and strengthen informal and family caregiving structures. In doing so, APOLLO aims to ease the burden of care and improve work-life balance on multiple levels.

More Information: https://www.alpine-space.eu/project/apollo/

Funding:
European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
Grant amount: €1,854,750.00
Total project budget: €2,473,000.20

Project Duration:
Start: 9/2024
End: 08/2027

Link APOLLO-Projekt: https://www.alpine-space.eu/project/apollo/

ACSELL – „ACcelerating SmE innovation capacities with a Living Lab approach”

As major trends of our time, demographic change and digitization are transforming entire societies, and the challenges we face are huge. Especially in the economic sector, much is in upheaval and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular are affected by the changes and must adapt. Chances to achieve this adaptation are the use of methods of open innovation ("Living Lab" approach and end user participation) and learning from each other in a European context. How exactly this can be achieved is the subject of the Interreg project ACSELL, which will use the health and care sector as an example.

ACSELL aims to 1) raise awareness of the benefits of the Living Lab approach, 2) identify good practices in partner regions to improve local innovation policies, 3) increase innovation capacity and performance, and 4) actively promote trans-regional cooperation and learning.

Funding:

European Regional Development Fund grant: 1,402,405.00 €

Gesamtes Projektvolumen: 1,685,004.00 €

Duration:

Start date: 01/08/2019

End date: 31/07/2023

Partners:

• Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen (Tübingen, Germany) (lead)
• Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship (Brussels, Belgium)
• Timiş County Council (Timisoara, Romania)
• Ideklinikken, North Denmark Region (Aalborg, Denmark)
• Central European Initiative (Trieste, Italy)
• Scottish Government (TEC Division) (Edinburgh, United Kingdom)
• LiCalab, Thomas Morus University of Applied Sciences (Geel, Belgium)
• Technology Park Ljubljana Ltd. (Ljubljana, Slovenia)

Link to ACSELL page:

https://www.interregeurope.eu/acsell/

TAAFE - "Towards an Alpine Age - Friendly Environment"

The Taafe project is supported by the European Union within the framework of the Community Initiative "Interreg" of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). TAAFE stands for "Towards an Alpine Age - Friendly Environment", which to a certain extent already indicates the general objective, namely the strengthening of the local administrative level in the age-friendly restructuring of municipalities. More concretely, this means the further development of the capacities of local authorities, for example in local health care, public transport, buildings and living environments, communication and information, but also in participation in decision-making processes at the municipal level and in social participation and inclusion. In this way, the project actively contributes to finding and testing solutions for dealing with demographic change.
To this end, a so-called trio is to be established at the local level, consisting of representatives of the senior citizens, the participating municipality (the municipality of Mössingen supported by the District Office of Tübingen, which is also a project partner) and a process facilitator (in this case the University of Tübingen in the form of the LebensPhasenHaus team). This TRIO will then develop a World Health Organisation concept on "age-friendly communities/cities" and implement it within the municipality, with the focus on ensuring the sustainable participation of older people in the planning and implementation of measures in the areas mentioned.

A particular added value of this approach is now that several partner regions across Europe are implementing the same concept of "age-friendly environments" within their regions. Special attention is paid to the regional characteristics (social structures, different state structure and organisation, different starting conditions, etc.) of the respective regions. In international workshops the trios from the regions network with partners from all over Europe and discuss their respective measures and solutions. In this way, the project enables European, transnational exchange of knowledge and thus contributes to the identification of good practices against the background of the question of how demographic change can be better managed.

Funding:

European Regional Development Fund grant: 1,623,251.37 €

Total project volume: 2,168,317 EUR

Duration:

Start date: 01/10/2019

End date: 30/06/2022

Partners:

• Municipality of Treviso (Coordinator, Italiy)
• Institute for Seniors Care and Retirement (Treviso, Italy)
• Central European Initiative (Trieste, Italy)
• Université Grenoble Alpes (Grenoble, France)
• Communal Center of Social Action of Marseille (Marseille, France)
• Anton Trstenjak Institute for Gerontology and Intergenerational Relations (Lubiljana, Slovenia)
• Municipality of Žiri (Slovenia)
• Center for Social Innovation (Austria)
• Municipality of Feldbach (Austria)
• Generation 65 Plus (Uitikon, Switzerland)
• City of Zurich Foundation for Retirement Homes (Zürich, Switzerland)
• District Office of Tuebingen (Germany)
• Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen (Germany)
• Partner for the regional pilot implementation in Germany: Municipality of Mössingen (Germany)

Link to TAAFE-Project page:

https://www.alpine-space.eu/projects/taafe/en/home