(10 December 2018) – The Social Innovation Community (SIC) project, coordinated by AEIDL, is coming to the end of its three-year duration with two key events in November that allowed the team to showcase its achievements and to discuss with policy-makers and stakeholders how best to advance the social innovation agenda.
.A delegation from the SIC project presented its SI Declaration at the high-profile Web Summit, which took place in Lisbon on 6 November, inaugurating the very first ‘Social Innovation Village’, showcasing how technological innovation can be harnessed for social progress.
The Declaration was the culmination of a public consultation to identify the key policy challenges to realising the potential of Europe’s social innovation community. The SIC project carried out a series of online activities and discussions to assess the wide range of approaches and policy needs across Europe’s SI community. The community’s input was vital, comprising contributions from more than 350 people from 19 Member States.
The presentation of the Declaration was followed by the SIC final event, ‘Beyond Imagination: a socially innovative Europe’, held in Seville on 12-13 November. It brought together 38 speakers and more than 120 participants from 19 countries, including European Commission representatives. The event challenged participants to explore how we can all build on the success of the project, alternating between projects presentation, provocative debates and practical workshop sessions.
Despite the end of the SIC project, the adventure will go on. The political will and backing from the EC should now be followed by national and regional authorities to unleash the power of communities and smaller organisations to drive change and translated into concrete actions.