SINGA is a non-governmental organisation that offers pre-incubation, incubation and acceleration programmes as well as support programmes to newly arrived immigrants and local residents with a project related to migration. The programme offers individual follow-up and group workshops to help entrepreneurs develop the foundations of their project and find the type of support best suited to their needs. Participants who wish to pursue additional opportunities have access to resources and tools, including taking additional courses to improve their language skills. 

The Aid for the Unemployed Creating or Taking over a Business (Aide aux chômeurs créateurs et repreneurs d’entreprise, ACCRE) is a regulatory measure that aimed to facilitate both the creation of new businesses  and the takeover of existing businesses by unemployed people. This measure allowed for a partial or total temporary exemption from social security contributions, social protection guarantees and minimum social benefits. The measure was expanded to the full population in 2019 under the name Aid to Business Creators and Buyers (Aide aux créateurs et repreneurs d’entreprise, ACRE).

Created in 2014, the scheme Intergenerational Pairs for Business Creation and Takeover (Tandem Inter-Générationnel pour la Creation et la Reprise d’Entreprise, TIGCRE) supports business projects led by joint teams of youth and senior entrepreneurs. It helps aspiring entrepreneurs form teams of two co-founders (a youth and a senior) and provides training and coaching to support them in creating or taking over a business.

Force Femmes is a non-profit organisation that supports unemployed women over 45 years old in business creation and finding employment through training and individualised support. The programme is supported by public institutions and private sector companies.

Self-Employed Worker with a Disability (Travailleur Independent Handicapé, TIH) is an official status for people with a recognised disability who are self-employed or create businesses. TIH status recipients qualify for financial and non-financial support in their entrepreneurial activities and their corporate clients enjoy reduced social contributions.
 

In general, work-related social vouchers, whether in paper or digital, are benefits given by employers to employees/workers to buy specific goods or services (food, childcare, holidays, etc.) aimed to improve their working conditions or to facilitate work-life balance Their main objective is to guarantee the fulfilment of an essential need while increasing the purchasing power of employees and stimulating local consumption. As such, they support consumption instead of savings (Bailey, 2004 ). National and/or local authorities also use social vouchers to target subsidies to specific groups (e.g. culture vouchers) or small business (e.g. innovation, skills development vouchers). The objective is to target groups or firms who could not have otherwise accessed, or at least not to the same extent, the specific goods or services (Bailey, 2004 ).

Launched in 2018, Booster Circulaire is a publicly supported programme that helps furniture makers across France reduce their environmental impact and operate within the circular economy. This initiative highlights the potential for policymakers at the national, regional and local level to utilise the social economy to achieve specific social and environmental objectives. Partly financed by the European Social Fund, Booster Circulaire also collaborates with a diverse set of partners ranging from public authorities and social economy actors, to construction firms and commercial furniture manufacturers to obtain waste materials, encourage responsible manufacturing processes, facilitate networking and raise the profile of the circular economy.

Established as a joint effort by Les Canaux, a French social economy support association that was launched by the city of Paris in 2017, and Valdelia, a non-profit producer responsibility organisation – éco-organisme – that recycles, refurbishes and reuses office furniture, the programme provides participants with training, commercialisation support, networking opportunities and other guidance over an 18-month period. For its first edition in 2019, Booster Circulaire worked with 15 entities across France, most of them being social and solidarity economy organisations, to develop activities in a circular fashion. The furniture was featured in the 2020 Paris Design Week as part of an exhibition on responsible manufacturing and the circular economy.

The second round was launched in 2020  has adopted a greater focus on the south-western region of Occitanie in France and is co-operating with Sicoval, a community of municipalities (communauté d’agglomeration) which promotes the social economy in the region southeast of Toulouse. This round will work with an additional 20 entities over the course of 18 months. While a smaller share of the accepted applicants operate within the social economy due to the edition’s focus on developing industrial networks, all participants are familiar with the principles, objectives and business models of the social economy and encouraged to cooperate with social economy organisations.

This initiative highlights how policy makers can support business development and create new market not only through funding capacity-building initiatives but also the development of strategic partnerships with actors from the social economy and traditional businesses.

Femmes Business Angel (FBA) is the largest women business angels network in Europe, and the only one in France. It was created in 2003 by a small group of women, with the objective of bringing together the few women active as business angels in France. It aims to promote the role of women in the economy, in particular as entrepreneurs.  Femmes Business Angels supports its members in funding high-potential start-ups led by women and men. The initiative was launched with support from the France Angels network and the Ile de France regional government (Conseil Général d’Ile de France). It has a large number of partnerships with private sector corporations and business incubators and receives support from Bpifrance, a public investment bank.
 

Plan entrepreneuriat des femmes (Women’s Entrepreneurship Plan) aims to increase the proportion of women in new business start-ups to 40% in 2017. There are three main pillars of support: (i) improve information dissemination to women entrepreneurs on available public support; (ii) providing individual support to entrepreneurs (e.g. mentoring, training, networking); and (iii) improving access to finance. In addition, some measures target women entrepreneurs in rural areas.

The initiative Fonds de garantie à l’initiative des femmes (FGIF) (‘Guarantee funds for the creation, take-over or development of companies initiated by women’) is part of the National Guarantee Funds scheme. It encourages the creation, take-over and development of companies by women with the provision of a loan guarantee issued through France Active Garantie.