Imagine a neighborhood bulletin board — but online and Europe-wide — where people struggling financially can find out what benefits they're entitled to, share tips on getting by, and even earn a kind of digital token for helping each other out. The PIE News team built exactly that: a web platform tested in Croatia, Italy, and the Netherlands, aimed at the roughly 25% of Europeans living in or near poverty. It combines practical welfare information with a community reputation system and a digital currency people can use to exchange goods and services, cutting out the usual bureaucratic maze.
Across Europe, roughly 25% of the population faces poverty or social exclusion, yet existing welfare systems are fragmented and hard to navigate. Precarious workers, working poor, and NEETs often don't know what support is available to them, and there's no easy way for communities to share practical solutions or pool resources outside of bureaucratic channels.
A web-based Collective Awareness Platform with 3 core components: a welfare information aggregator, a community reputation system, and a digital currency for exchanging goods and services. The team delivered 14 project outputs including 4 rounds of interface mock-ups and ran live pilots in Croatia, Italy, and the Netherlands.
If you are a municipal welfare office dealing with low citizen uptake of available benefits — this project developed a tested digital platform that aggregates welfare provisions into one accessible interface. It was piloted in 3 countries and designed to reach precarious workers, working poor, and NEETs who fall through traditional safety nets.
If you are a social enterprise or NGO dealing with fragmented community support for vulnerable populations — this project developed a Collective Awareness Platform with a built-in reputation system and digital currency. It enables bottom-up networking among the 25% of Europeans affected by poverty, letting communities self-organize mutual aid.
If you are a civic tech company looking for proven platform architecture for community welfare solutions — this project delivered 14 technical deliverables including interface designs, a reputation engine, and a digital currency system. The platform was publicly designed with end users across 3 European pilots.
The project received EUR 1,994,667 in EU funding and was coordinated by a public university (Università degli Studi di Trento). Licensing terms are not specified in the available data. As a publicly funded research project, parts of the platform or methodology may be available under open terms — direct contact with the coordinator would clarify.
The platform was piloted in Croatia, Italy, and the Netherlands with a consortium spanning 5 countries and 9 partners. The design explicitly targeted European-wide applicability, addressing poverty conditions affecting 25% of the European population. Scaling would require localization of welfare data per country.
IP is held by the 9-partner consortium led by Università degli Studi di Trento (Italy). The project was funded under H2020 RIA rules, which typically allow partners to retain ownership of their results. Based on available project data, specific IP licensing arrangements would need to be confirmed with the coordinator.
The project produced 14 deliverables including interface mock-ups across 4 iterations and ran 3 real-world pilot actions. The platform reached public deployment stage during the project period (2016-2019), but post-project maintenance status is unknown.
Based on the project objective, the platform combines a reputation system to reward community contributions with a digital currency that can be used for goods and services both within and outside the platform. This was designed as a practical incentive layer, not a speculative cryptocurrency.
The platform was built as a standalone Collective Awareness Platform (CAPS). Based on available deliverable data, 14 deliverables were produced covering the full stack. Integration with existing municipal or NGO systems would likely require API development or data-sharing agreements.
The project was funded under the ICT-10-2015 call specifically for Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation. It aligns with EU social inclusion goals and involved policy-relevant outputs. Based on available data, the project engaged with policy-relevant dissemination.
The 9-partner consortium spans 5 countries (Croatia, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, UK) with a mix of 2 universities, 3 research organizations, 2 industry players, and 2 other entities. The industry ratio is 22% with zero SMEs, indicating this was primarily a research-driven effort. The coordinator, Università degli Studi di Trento, is a well-established Italian university. For a business looking to adopt or build on this work, the academic-heavy consortium means strong research methodology but may require additional commercial partners for market deployment.
Reach out to Università degli Studi di Trento (Italy) — the project coordinator. SciTransfer can help establish the connection.
Want to explore how this welfare platform technology could serve your municipality or organization? SciTransfer can arrange an introduction to the research team and help assess fit for your specific needs.
