After having prepared the basic principles for a social innovation national competence center (SINCC) during a 2021-2023 project, based on the call in 2020, the partners INSISST formed a new consortium for the open Call “National Competence Centres for Social Innovation: Building-up and Consolidating the Capacity entitled ‘ESF+ Network of Competence Centres for Social Innovation (ENCCSI)’” The partners joined forces for the professionalization and further development of SINCCs in their member states.
Partners:
- Social Innovation Factory (‘SIF’ - Belgium)
- Rethink Ireland
- Genio
- Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL-FI
- The Social Innovation Unit (SIU)
- Shipyard Foundation (PL)
- Social Innovation Academy (DK)
Objectives:
Social innovation has a crucial role to play for building just and fair societies that respect the environment, given all the challenges we face today and tomorrow. All partners have worked on a strategy for the SINCCs, we are ready to take action, and to analyse and filter out the models that best suit the support of SI in their region. Our emphasis will be on sustaining and future-proofing these models for supporting SI in each region so that by 2027 we are collectively well-positioned to scale further and broaden the impact of our work both nationally and at a European level.
The overall objectives of the consortium:
- decent and efficient project management, in order to make the necessary progress and to be accountable
- strengthen the ecosystem and environment for social innovation by strengthening opportunities for networking and collaboration between public authorities, academia, private and third sector organisations around identified and priority societal challenges.
- peer-to-peer learning and capacity building for challenges defined in a “dynamic learning agenda”, and involving external expertise where needed. Also learning from other consortia will be covered.
- monitoring and reflexive evaluation on the development process and the impact of the SINCCs
- internal and external communication and dissemination, so that other stakeholders interested in our work can learn from our endeavor, its successes and (possible) fails.
Rethink Ireland (IRL) & Genio (IRL)
Under the INSSISST Project, Rethink Ireland and Genio intend to build upon the outcomes achieved during the previous EU Call, the FUSE project, to further support the development of the social innovation sector both at a national and transnational European level. Under the FUSE project, Ireland’s main activities included the mapping of Ireland’s social innovation ecosystem support structures, capacity-building of key social innovation players, and the development of a Blueprint for a Strategy and Action Plan for Social Innovation in Ireland. The proposed activities under this call have been directly informed by those proposed within the Blueprint. These activities will simultaneously build capacity, strengthen cross-sectoral national networks, develop capacity for scaling, explore the development of a National Competence Centre for Social Innovation in Ireland, as well as new tailor-made funding mechanisms and a national methodological framework for social impact assessment.
We are aiming to implement this project with an ecosystem approach that is inclusive and participatory, evidence-based, bottom-up, multistakeholder and iterative in nature.
- We will recommend a model for the establishment of a resource centre and hub to catalyse and drive the development of the social innovation sector nationally,
- We will develop a national methodological framework for social impact assessment.
- We will develop a capacity building program to support social innovation at different stages of their development cycles
- We will facilitate the creation of a new financial instrument or funding scheme with a blended-approach bringing public and private funding with the aim of supporting social innovation to scale and maximise impact
- We will raise awareness to different audiences
