Social innovation makes best practice

Ten projects tackling social problems across Europe were revealed this week as the winners of the first European social innovation competition. ‘This is European Social Innovation’ is a new initiative coordinated by Euclid Network and Social Innovation Exchange in partnership with the European Commission and the Bilbao Social Innovation Park. It was launched to identify best practice examples of social innovation, and over one hundred applications from twenty-three countries were received.

The ten winning projects, which range from a programme combbatting the lack of legal identities in Roma communities, to a French inner city “cargocycle” transportation initiative, will now be showcased in a European Commission publication on social innovation, and used as case studies in the Commission’s innovation agenda. The coordinators of each project will also receive an invitation to an innovation workshop at the Social Innovation Park in Bilbao.

The selected projects are:

Aconchego Program, Porto Social Foundation, Portugal

Ageing Well, Siel Bleu, France

Connected Care, Turning Point, UK

Copenhagen Honey Cooperative, København Byhonning Kooperation, Denmark

Digital Pioneers Fund and Academy, Kennisland, The Netherlands

Dreams Academy, Turkey

ELTERN-AG, Germany

La Petite Reine, France

Roma Legal Rights, Vrancea County Council, Romania

Vitaever, Nethical Innovating Healthcare, Italy

The jury also gave special mention to two further projects, which do not fulfil the criteria as they have not yet been completed, but showed great potential and innovation:

Hiriko, DenokInn, Spain

Social Investment Bond, Social Finance, UK

Rosa Gallego, Chair of Asociación Española de Fundaciones, and a member of the 8 person jury that selected the winning projects, described why supporting social innovation is so important,

“Innovation is key for development in any sector or activity in life. The world we live in faces a number of challenges too big and important for the current structures to solve them. We need people, institutions and government to innovate, to find new ways of solving today’s social population.”

Simona Paravani, Global Strategy Chief Investment Officer for Wealth at HSBC, said: “The breadth, depth and potential of the projects is just unbelievable.”

As the response to the initiative has demonstrated, there is no shortage of social innovation in Europe. However there are still huge improvements to be made in supporting, developing and raising awareness of the wide ranging innovative solutions with which we can address society’s problems. Socially focused initiatives must be highlighted within the wider field of innovation.

Find out more

http://www.euclidnetwork.eu/pages/en/this-is-european-social-innovation.html