Europe and Social Innovation The Role of Civil Society and Institutional Actors Ana Vale – Equal, Portugal January 2009 The role of civil society and institutional actors in promoting social innovation The EQUAL experience in Portugal

Europe and Social Innovation The Role of Civil Society and Institutional Actors Ana Vale – Equal, Portugal January 2009 The EQUAL Community Initiative A starting point : new solutions to social problems more and more complex can benefit from the exchange of experiences, practices, knowledge and reflection between Member States A clear objective : developing innovative actions to fight against discrimation in the labour market

Europe and Social Innovation The Role of Civil Society and Institutional Actors Ana Vale – Equal, Portugal January 2009 A framework: the innovation and mainstreaming cycle: needs diagnosis, testing, validation and mainstreaming Principles: partnership, empowerment, gender equality, transnational cooperation, mainstreaming as main ingredients to promote social innovation

Europe and Social Innovation The Role of Civil Society and Institutional Actors Ana Vale – Equal, Portugal January 2009 Resources: Wide range of organisations and people involved National and european networks Time to achieve results and mainstream them Specific funding allocated to social innovation

Europe and Social Innovation The Role of Civil Society and Institutional Actors Ana Vale – Equal, Portugal January 2009 Changing the paradigm: To focus on individuals and communities strenghts rather than their weaknesses Community based solutions rather than national solutions To capitalize on diversity rather than discriminating gender, race, religion, age, handicapped people To build solutions with the target groups rather than detached from them To develop an holistic approach to problems rather than answering in a fragmented way To reinforce collaborative solutions and partnerships rather than give one organisation one responsability

Europe and Social Innovation The Role of Civil Society and Institutional Actors Ana Vale – Equal, Portugal January 2009 Changing the paradigm: To encourage collaboration rather than competition To make information available rather than limited and inaccessible To make a better use of resources rather than duplicate effort

Europe and Social Innovation The Role of Civil Society and Institutional Actors Ana Vale – Equal, Portugal January 2009 The role of civil society finding collaborative solutions instead of competition among organisations building users led services building a sense of community promoting civic engagement sharing resources and responsibilities to achieve a common purpose valuing exchange of information and networking with others

Europe and Social Innovation The Role of Civil Society and Institutional Actors Ana Vale – Equal, Portugal January 2009 Institutional actors as active players In building new solutions To be commited to social innovation To adopt partnering as a principle of good governance To be partnerships full members To recognise the value of empowering target groups and to allocate the necessary resources to that purpose To be part of networks to share knowledge To engage in continuous learning in order to resolve problems and constantly update their practices

Europe and Social Innovation The Role of Civil Society and Institutional Actors Ana Vale – Equal, Portugal January 2009 Institutional actors as active players In mainstreaming the new solutions To participate in the validation process to recognise the usefulness and quality of the new solutions To adopt new solutions coming out from other actors To support mainstreaming activities in a large scale To define new policies taking into account the innovative solutions (bottom-up approach)