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24 May 2022 13:30-16:30 CEST

What makes innovation of solutions to societal challenges happen? How do we support social innovation processes and make them last? And how can we strengthen the ecosystem?

Welcome to an interactive webinar where we exchange best practices on how to support social innovation. We will present key learnings from a study within the European transnational project Building Capacity for a Sustainable Society (BuiCaSuS) that includes Spain, France, Latvia and Sweden. The day also provides opportunities to share knowledge and experiences and connect with organisations in the ecosystems for social innovation in Europe.

The BuiCaSuS project is one of six projects within the EU working on strengthening national competence centres and ecosystems for social innovation, in relation to the new funding period of the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+).

The webinar is open to anyone with an interest in social innovation and in strengthening the ecosystems for social innovation.

Agenda
13:30 Welcome and introduction

13:40 How is the social innovation process supported? Findings from BuiCaSuS study on best practices

13:55 Parallel workshops:

  1. Implementing and scaling new solutions to societal challenges
  2. Designing funding to support the social innovation process

14:45 Break

15:00 Workshop – strengthening the ecosystem for social innovation on the regional level

16:00 Panel: What is needed to strengthen the ecosystem for social innovation in Spain, Latvia, France and Sweden?

16:25 Conclusions and next steps

16:30 The webinar ends


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All you need to know

The webinar takes place via Zoom. You will receive the Zoom link in an e-mail when you sign up.

If you have any questions, you may contact gloria-karin.lopez@mau.se.

The organizer of the webinar is the Forum for Social Innovation Sweden in collaboration with the rest of the partners in the consortium Building Capacity for a Sustainable Society (BuiCaSuS): Avise, The Spanish ESF Managing Authority, The Spanish State Secretary of Social Rights, The Society Integration Foundation, Inkludera and Reach for Change.

BuiCaSuS is a transnational project aimed to strengthen the capacities of national competence centres for social innovation. Partners come from Spain, Sweden, Latvia, and France. It is one of six consortia funded by the European Commission. Amongst its tasks is to map current social innovation systems, support piloting and upscaling schemes, foster transnational learning on support for social innovation, and develop policy propositions for National competence centres.

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Speakers

Anna Tengqvist
National and international coordinator, Forum for Social Innovation Sweden

Anna Tengqvist works as a national and international coordinator at Forum for Social Innovation Sweden. She has worked with issues of social sustainability, social innovation and empowerment for 25 years, leading, supporting, and analyzing complex change processes for sustainable development.

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Gloria-Karin López
Moderator

Gloria-Karin López is currently a project manager at Forum for Social Innovation Sweden where she leads the theme “Innovation and collaboration for the rights of the child”. She is a human rights and sustainability expert with a long engagement for the rights of the child and experience in the sectors of academia, social enterprises, and non-governmental organizations. Gloria-Karin is passionate about creating arenas for agents across all sectors since she believes that this is necessary to reach a more sustainable world.

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Laura Mangeng
Policy Assistant, European Commission

Laura Mangeng is a Policy Assistant at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion. Her work focuses, among others, on the financing of social innovation initiatives through the European Social Fund+ across the EU.

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Alexis Bouges
Project manager, Avise

Passionate about social innovation, Alexis had the opportunity to support it in Sweden, France and Mexico. After having developed the local branch of a French social entrepreneurs' network, helped public and private actors launch impactful projects, and made failure “trendy” from Mexico, he now contributes to the development of social innovation in France and in Europe within the Avise team.

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Andrés Bedoya
Innovation and facilitation policy officer, French Ministry of Labor and Social Inclusion

Andrés Bedoya is a French public servant in charge of the innovation and facilitation mission at the French Ministry of Labor and Social Inclusion. He is part of the team that coordinates The French Skills Investment Plan, 15 billion euros to invest in the upskilling of the young and the least qualified job seekers.

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Jenny Engström
Program Manager, Innovation Management, Vinnova - Sweden’s innovation agency

Jenny Engström is working with exploring different ways to stimulate the innovation capacity within the public sector and civil society in order to make necessary innovations submerge faster. “We need to innovate how we innovate” to meet the societal changes of today.

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Filipe Almeida
President, Portugal Social Innovation

Filipe Almeida is the president of Portugal Social Innovation, a pioneering Government initiative that mobilizes European funds to promote social innovation and develop the social investment market in Portugal. He is also professor of the University of Coimbra and researcher at the Center of Social Studies (CES/FEUC) and Center of Cooperative and Social Economy Studies (CECES/FEUC). He holds a PhD in Business Administration from EBAPE / FGV (Brazilian School of Public Administration and Business, Getúlio Vargas Foundation, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and a PhD in Business Management from the University of Coimbra.

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Marielle Zieds
Project manager, Avise

Marielle has been Project manager at Avise in the Scale Up team for 4 years. Her work focuses on how to support the upscaling strategies of social enterprises as part of the Social and Solidarity Economy in France.

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Gráinne Smith
FUSE Projector Coordinator, Genio

Gráinne works with Genio as the FUSE Projector Coordinator. She has over 20 years of experience working with statutory and non-statutory agencies, both nationally and internationally, focusing on designing, implementing and evaluating evidence-based programmes and services. She is skilled at progressing from development stages to implementation, aligning strategies with innovation and cost-efficiency.

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Izaskun Azcona
Delegate in Navarre, “La Caixa” Foundation

Izaskun Azcona has been the representative of “La Caixa” Foundation in Navarre for 10 years. She is responsible for implementing the foundations’ programs in the region and adapting the entity’s strategy to the territory. She was previously part of the communication team in CaixaBank and other philanthropic entities related to the banking sphere.

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Alice Deceuninck
Project Manager, Avise

Alice Deceuninck holds a master's degree from the School of Public Affairs of Sciences Po Paris where she specialized in social policies and social innovation. She is currently a Project Manager at the Territories Department of Avise, an engineering non-profit agency whose mission is to develop the social and solidarity economy (ESS) and social innovation in France.

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Anders Bro
Development Manager, PhD, Region Örebro County

Anders Bro works for Region Örebro County as a Development Manager, PhD. His job is to strengthen the conditions for social economy. Anders is one of the coordinators of the Partnership for Social Innovation in Örebro County. He is also assigned as an expert on social enterprises at the Swedish Association for Local Authorities and Regions and is a member of GECES, the European Commission expert group on social economy and social enterprises.

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Mariana Cancela
Civic innovation labs coordinator, LAAAB

Mariana Cancela's work focuses on the management of citizen innovation programs and promoting meeting spaces between institutions and citizens.

She collaborates regularly with the LAAAB (Laboratory of Aragon Open Government) in different programs and coordinates the technical secretariat of the Open Government Alliance in Aragon. She is also in charge of the management and production of the MOOC “How to set up a citizen laboratory and build collaboration networks”, with more than 6 thousand students enrolled in its two editions. This project, promoted by the Ministry of Culture and Sports and Medialab-Prado, later gave rise to an action of more than 100 simultaneous citizen laboratories in different cities of Ibero-America.

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Gorka Espiau
Director, ALC-Basque Social Innovation Lab

Gorka Espiau Idoiaga (PhD) is the Director at the “Agirre Lehendakaria Center for Social and Political Studies”, a University of the Basque Country and Columbia University (AC4) collaborative initiative to share the Basque case of socio-economic transformation under extreme difficulties. Espiau is also a founding partner of Social Innovation Laboratory Koop (SILK) and Scientific Director of the Work4Progress initiative powered by La Caixa Foundation. Previously, he served as Senior Advisor to the Executive Office of the Basque President.

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Malin Lindberg
Professor of gender and technology, Luleå University of Technology

Malin Lindberg studies the development and promotion of social innovation on local, regional and national levels. She especially studies joint efforts by civil society, the public sector, industry and academia to tackle societal challenges. By means of a participatory research approach - where societal actors are actively involved in the research process - her research contributes to both scientific and societal development.

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Prunelle Gorget
Programme Director, Avise

Involved for 15 years in the social innovation acknowledgement for a sustainable society, Prunelle GORGET is the programme director of Avise in France. She leads the Agency's poles to support non-profit organisations, social enterprises at every stage of their development and scale-up high-impact projects in all sectors of activities.

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Evija Kleina
Deputy Director of the Social Cohesion Department, Society Integration Foundation

For more than 20 years Evija Kleina has worked as a project manager and monitoring expert at various social integration programmes, designed for improving the life of socially excluded groups, supporting and strengthening the capacity of civil society organisations. In recent years Evija was part of the implementation team at the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived in Latvia. She has experience working with national and different international programs and also the European Social Fund.

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Berta Gonzalez Antón
Advisor to the Cabinet of the Secretary of State for Social Rights in Spain

In charge of issues related to people with disabilities, the elderly and other areas such as deinstitutionalisation processes, the transformation of care and innovation of care models. As a sociologist and expert on Disabilities, Mental Illness and Behavioural Alterations, Berta's career has been linked to support organisations for people with disabilities. Before joining the Spanish Ministry, she has been technical director of Plena Inclusión España, coordinating projects aimed at the transformation of support models towards people-centred services, deinstitutionalisation and the development of community approaches.

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Sara Bjärstorp
Director of Forum for Social Innovation Sweden, at Malmö University

Sara Bjärstorp is Director of Forum for Social Innovation Sweden, at Malmö University. She is also responsible for developing the university's external relations with the cultural sector. Sara Bjärstorp holds a PhD in English Literature.

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Organiser

Forum for Social Innovation Sweden