In this eighth episode of Season 2 of The Social Economist, our third mini-series continues! We’re excited to be talking about the topic of social procurement - specifically about what can be done to put social procurement into practice in the context of a local government.
In this second episode of this mini-series, host Toby Gazeley from Euclid Network is joined by Rein Douma from the Municipality of The Hague in the Netherlands to understand how social enterprises are being engaged through procurement.
Toby and Rein cover many of the key areas, discussing the various dimensions of social procurement as well as the potential for social procurement to provide work integration opportunities in a local context. Rein highlighted the importance of collaboration between different departments in local authorities, understanding the trade-offs in prioritising different outcomes. Rein also noted the importance of building the capacity of social enterprises and the need to look well into the future to prepare the ecosystem and procurement opportunities in tandem to ensure maximum impact.
Social Return in the Netherlands was also highlighted as a significant policy as well as various Acts on public procurement, such as Procurement Act 2.82. Rein also highlighted the benefit of local networks of social entrepreneurs for supporting the roll-out of social procurement. In this case, this is Social Club Den Haag.
Rein was happy to share two sports podcasts for our listeners, a new type of recommendation for us! These were Bureau Sport, a Dutch Language Podcast coming out every Monday morning. He also recommended That Peter Crouch Podcast, one which Toby was also excited to try out. Toby also shared, as always, a political podcast recommendation: Politico’s Powerplay podcast.
Please do get in touch with any questions or feedback at toby@euclidnetwork.eu
A special thanks to Jan Kiszowara at Euclid Network who produces this podcast and the European Commission for making this all possible.
Our theme music is 'another twelve' by Mikel Patrick Avery at Music for Podcasts.