The Community of Practice on Social Innovation aims to strengthen Member States’ capacity to programme and deliver on social innovation under the ESF+.
The activities aim to:
- Facilitate the sharing of options and models for programming the social innovation priority under ESF+ Programmes.
- Encourage networking between projects building national competence centres for social innovation, ESF bodies and other relevant stakeholders.
- Build capacity in social innovation ecosystem mapping, design, functions and governance of national competence centres for social innovation.
- Develop thematic notes on key issues, such as scaling-up and community-led local development (CLLD).
Members of this community of practice work on four projects which have been outlined below.
Peer pioneers: social innovation kick starters
The project involved managing authority officials and ESF stakeholders who worked on social innovation under the programming period 2014-2020 and those who were amongst the front runners in drafting ESF+ Programmes. Through virtual peer-to-peer support and mutual learning, members draw on lessons from top-performing managing authorities on social innovation to consider how they could use those plans and indicators as inspiration and apply them to their context, challenges and opportunities.
Community-led local development (CLLD) with a focus on practices with an innovative component
This project focuses on providing evidence on the successful use of CLLD as an approach that captures social innovation at a local level. The study developed in cooperation with members reflects on how to programme CLLD under the ESF+ (i.e., mistakes to be avoided, challenges identified by managing authorities, capacity building needs) building on the experience of ESF in the current programming period as well as other EU programmes.
Project publications:
Beyond innovation: scaling-up/replicating/scaling across
The project aims to develop a more systematic evidence-based approach in planning, implementing and assessing social innovation. By revising existing ESF social innovation projects, members of this community will identify approaches and key elements to facilitate the scaling-up and transferability of promising social invocation projects
Project publications:
Competence centres for social innovation
This project aims to facilitate exchanges on the core tasks of six consortia setting up national competence centres for social innovation. The mutual learning exchanges focus on the following themes: social innovation ecosystem mapping; scaling-up process by the competence centre projects; mutual learning to facilitate connections between the projects, managing authorities and competence centres stakeholders; and, design and governance of the competence centres.
Activities
Find out what activities have taken place as part of this community of practice. Use the menu below to see each activity.
Please note: Activities are being updated on an ongoing basis.
The kick-off meeting jump-started the work of the Community of Practice on Social Innovation in the framework of the ESF Transnational Cooperation Platform until June 2022. The aim of the kick-off meeting was to present and discuss the objectives of the Community of Practice, the sub-themes and the work programme, allowing members to express interest in hosting or participating in mutual learning events, and to introduce communication mechanisms and ways of co-working.
- Agenda: ESF TCP Kick-off meeting of the Community of Practice on Social Innovation (2020) - English (81.2 KB - PDF)
- Summary report: ESF TCP Kick-off meeting of the Community of Practice on Social Innovation (2020) - English (77.5 KB - PDF)
Organised by the Community of Practice on Social Innovation, this peer-to-peer training aimed to develop knowledge and competencies to apply social innovation within the next ESF programmes. The training helped participants to differentiate the roles needed in a social innovation ecosystem, how to prepare a call for social innovation projects and how to help projects measure their impact.
- Agenda: ESF TCP Peer to Peer Training on Social Innovation (2021) - English (96.9 KB - PDF)
- Summary report: ESF TCP Peer to Peer Training on Social Innovation (2021) - English (350 KB - PDF)
A set of three meetings allowed participants to present a challenge encountered in relation to programming social innovation within ESF+ and receive practical ideas for solutions from peers.
Each meeting focused on a specific dilemma of four managing authorities, for instance: how to engage a diverse range of organisations and go beyond traditional project calls; what structures to create for a managing authority starting out on social innovation; how to embed a culture of innovation in the public administration.
The aim of this webinar is to present the current state of knowledge about scaling social innovation emerging from policy, research and practice. This will provide a shared base of understanding for the workshop, planned on 30 April 2021, that will focus on the development of a set of criteria by which to assess scalability and a call for examples of innovations with potential for scaling.
The webinar, workshop and inspiring examples of social innovation will inform the toolkit on scaling social innovation in ESF, which will be developed within the Community of Practice on Social Innovation.
- Agenda: ESF TCP Webinar on scaling social innovation (2021) - English (133 KB - PDF)
- Summary report: ESF TCP Webinar on scaling social innovation (2021) - English (249 KB - PDF)
This workshop explored and share perspectives on the use of community-led local development (CLLD) in the ESF and how it can promote social innovation. It examined the added value of adopting a CLLD approach; explored different experiences of how it can promote social innovation in practice; analysed key challenges and solutions to working in this way; and, looked at how CLLD approaches can be further developed to address the challenges of unemployment, social exclusion, and inequality.
- Agenda: ESF TCP Workshop on ESF and Community-led local development (CLLD) with a focus on practices with an innovative component (2021) - English (121 KB - PDF)
- Summary report: ESF TCP Workshop on ESF and Community-led local development (CLLD) with a focus on practices with an innovative component (2021) - English (385 KB - PDF)
This workshop aimed for European Social Fund (ESF) stakeholders to engage with real-world examples of scaling up innovations and develop a set of principles for a model call on scaling up social innovations under the ESF+.
The workshop is part of a process to develop a toolkit for scaling up social innovations in the ESF context, which will incorporate a screening tool adapted to different origins of social innovations and different routes to scale-up.
- Agenda: ESF TCP Workshop on screening tool for scalability (2021) - English (168 KB - PDF)
- Summary report: ESF TCP Workshop on screening tool for scalability (2021) - English (730 KB - PDF)
This meeting helped bring together projects creating national competence centres for social innovation. The aim of the meeting was to provide an overview of the projects creating national competence centres for social innovation and introduce key stakeholders as well as inform and discuss how mutual learning between the projects will be supported.
- Agenda: ESF TCP First meeting with competence centres for social innovation (2021) - English (81.9 KB - PDF)
This plenary meeting of the Community of Practice on Social Innovation took place online and reflected on past activities, introduced projects establishing national competence centres for social innovation, shared practices and discussed priorities for the future work programme of the community of practice.
The European Commission is currently supporting six projects building national competence centres for social innovation. For two years (May 2021-May 2023), ESF managing authorities, social innovation support organisations, research centres and other involved partners design and develop competence centres, which can help their countries to promote social innovation, including with funding from ESF+ and other EU programmes. These competence centres are expected to build the capacity of all stakeholders; networking among stakeholders and developing synergies between the different European funding schemes and setting up a transnational exchange among national competence centres.
- Agenda: ESF TCP First Plenary Meeting of the Community of Practice on Social Innovation (2021) - English (134 KB - PDF)
- Summary report: First Plenary Meeting of the Community of Practice on Social Innovation (2021) - English (204 KB - PDF)
During this meeting, members of the Community of Practice on Social Innovation had the opportunity to test out the Social Innovation Database. The aim was to highlight the database to future users while gathering feedback and discuss practical options for managing new database content in a decentralised manner.
- Agenda: User testing of the Social innovation database (2021) - English (91.4 KB - PDF)
This meeting discussed research methodology for the mapping studies by the competence centre projects and presented social innovation elements in the draft ESF+ Programmes in Czechia, Netherlands, and Poland. Managing authorities and social innovation actors presented their past experiences of mapping the social innovation ecosystem and noted how their findings were used to support it.
A closed session was dedicated to discussing competence centre projects in more detail.
- Agenda: Second plenary meeting of the Community of Practice on Social Innovation (2021) - English (207 KB - PDF)
- Summary report: Second plenary meeting of the Community of Practice on Social Innovation (2021) - English (490 KB - PDF)
This meeting provided an update on the ESF Social Innovation+ initiative and discussed progress in programming social innovation priorities in ESF+ Programmes in Portugal and Germany. Social innovation actors from Ireland and Spain also presented lessons learnt from approaches used to scale-up social innovation initiatives. Furthermore, the meeting explored possible models for national competence centres for social innovation based on examples from Sweden and Greece.
A closed session was dedicated to discussing competence centre models and scaling up social innovation projects in more detail.
- Agenda: Plenary meeting of Community of Practice on Social Innovation (2022) - English (124 KB - PDF)
- Summary report: Plenary meeting of Community of Practice on Social Innovation (2022) - English (595 KB - PDF)
This meeting provided an update on the ESF Social Innovation+ initiative and progress in programming social innovation priorities in ESF+ Programmes across Member States with a focus on Bulgaria and Slovenia. Furthermore, the meeting included structured reflections on the added value of competence centres for social innovation.
A closed session clarified progress reporting by coordinators of the competence centre’s projects and provided a forum for peer support across consortia.
Agenda: Plenary meeting of Community of Practice on Social Innovation (2022) - English (97 KB - PDF)
Summary report: Plenary meeting of Community of Practice on Social Innovation (2022) - English (153 KB - PDF)
