Podcast | From dependent workers to free business owners: Ostrava fosters a new community

Even before the Just Transition Mechanism came to be, Czechia had devised its own Restart strategy as a way to figure out a way forward for its three coal regions. The most industrial of these – the Moravian-Silesian region, which borders Poland’s Silesia, is also the one that has progressed the most in its coal exit journey – and the sprawling industrial complex of Dolni Vitkovice in the city of Ostrava is a stark reminder of that. This used to be a city within the city, and now its enormous iron pipes and blast furnaces lay dormant awaiting a second life as cultural, educational and museum centres.

If you want to see the future face of the Czech Republic’s third largest city, however, you need to head a bit further out to the suburbs where another sprawling complex lies. This one contains the sleek and light buildings of the Technical University of Ostrava as well as the premises of the Moravian-Silesian Innovation Centre (MSIC). The latter institution, founded in 2017, as part of the Czech home-grown coal exit strategy, seeks to motivate, support, and educate the local population about the opportunities that abound when it comes to setting up successful and innovative businesses. All of this is with the aim of keeping the young generation home by showing them that rather than waiting idly for opportunities they have the power to create these themselves.

This is where a project like PODREG comes into play. Led by the MSIC, it is one of the flagship programmes of the Innovation Centre and a good illustration of the work of its experts with the local community. Indeed, ‘community’ here is a key word, for this is what the Center seeks to establish in the regional entrepreneurial sphere. Working at the grassroots, the MSIC attracts anyone who might fancy themselves as a future business owner or an innovator and brings them out of isolation to meet like-minded folks with special networking events and workshops where making mistakes and sharing them is encouraged.

And this is just one of the many facets of the complex PODREG project. To hear more about its intricate details and various programmes, tune in to the new episode of our TOP JOBS podcast where we speak with Adela Pichova and Nicolas Ivanovic from the MSIC.

Co-Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. The European Union cannot be held responsible for them.