Activities planned at national level

Greece

Project partners will support the ESF+ Managing Authority to recognise, systematise, reinforce and institutionalise social innovation as a contextual legislative framework by scaling-up three completed projects that are already recognised as best practice.
At city level, they will develop a platform (likely for Athens) to collect contributions from citizens’ groups, creating a space for collaboration with city authorities.
At regional level, the partners will support the Karditsa Development Agency, which unites small and medium-size organisations to create entrepreneurial opportunities for young, vulnerable and unemployed people.
At national level, the partners will reinforce REBRAIN Greece, a digital portal to collect and process labour market data on needs, skills and opportunities in a rapidly changing labour market, together with launching ten official National Social Innovation Policy Labs.

Italy

The partners will develop a Policy Design Lab for the ESF managing authorities in Italy. Beginning with the municipality of Turin, the Lab will design and test a national social innovation policy embedded in a more innovative public sector.
Adopting a multi-stakeholder approach, the partners will engage people and businesses directly affected by societal problems in co-designing solutions.
The partners will seek to reduce the distance between policy design and implementation through innovative processes that can envision policy impacts on the city ecosystem and design them accordingly.

Slovenia

Project partners will deliver an upgraded version of the existing Digital Social Innovation Lab, which was established within the Alpine Social Innovation Space (ASIS), in collaboration with the Noordung Centre.
They will support the social innovation network with a themed Digital Social Innovation Lab to share knowledge and create opportunities for collaboration between business, academia and the public sector.
The partners will enhance social actors’ digital skills, creative and problem-solving capacities by engaging them in the transformation of their community.
Slovenian partners are going to:

• provide a virtual environment for collaboration
• develop a collaborative platform for individuals, companies, communities and society to enhance their visibility and prompt a more proactive role in solving social innovation challenges and creating business opportunities
• encourage peer-to-peer communication in order to establish a non-intermediary, efficient and costfree business for members and customers.

Romania

The partners will embed Romania in a transnational ecosystem of knowledge sharing to identify innovative solutions suitable for the local context. They will focus on sharing social innovation knowledge and skills among the different public and private actors at local level, focusing on local communities.
They will pursue funding to support social innovation through the use of private financial resources and innovative participatory/citizen-led financial tools, including the financial instruments developed by fonduri-structurale.ro and Ashoka Romania.