CIVITTA Annual Review 2018 | Page 26

FACILITATING ALTERNATIVE FINANCING Industry: Financing CIVITTA team: Estonia, Ukraine, Romania ne of the most import- ant issues that SMEs in Europe are facing is difficulty to access financing. The alternative financ- ing sector has emerged very strongly and provides an attractive solution to the current financing gap. The sector is, however, very unevenly developed across Europe with South, Central and Eastern regions lagging behind. Altfinator project aims to carry out capacity building of the financial ecosystem and its participants to improve innovative SMEs’ access to alternative forms of financing in Europe until April 2020. The project consortium consists of 11 partners with a combined budget of 1.5 mil EUR. The project is coordi- nated by CIVITTA Estonia with CIVITTA Ukraine and CIVITTA Romania carrying out activities in their local markets. As a result of the strategy, the project will work on two areas; first equip the local stakeholders with materials, resources and online tools for capacity building and secondly work on the matching of innovative SMEs to alternative finance schemes. The partners will engage and broaden the stake- holder community, complemen ted by equal increase of knowledge, capacity and partnerships in support of provision and absorp- tion of alternative forms of financ- ing for innovative SMEs. ALTFInator has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 792040