Problem addressed

the project aims to reduce structural inequalities, promote social cohesion, and enable a green, digital, and inclusive transition across the region. 

Innovative solution

Key activities within the project include:

- Mapping existing social innovation initiatives and opportunities in 10 countries.
- Establishing Social Labs for co-creation, pilot testing, and knowledge exchange.
- Incubating and accelerating startups focused on social and environmental impact.
- Delivering training in sustainability, digital skills, gender equity, and impact investment.
- Organising contests and hackathons to foster innovation.
- Providing competitive funding to third parties, focusing on territorial and sectoral diversity.
- Launching a digital platform for e-learning, impact tracking, and community building.
- Hosting public-private dialogue spaces to align local strategies with national and regional priorities

Key results and benefits

1.Enhanced institutional capacities (public sector, CSOs, BSOs, academia) and the development of tools (such as roadmaps and country strategies) to establish social innovation hubs in the LAC region, drawing from successful EU models.

2.Strengthened entrepreneurial capacities (with a focus on youth, women, and vulnerable groups) and the development of companies offering services to vulnerable populations in the LAC region, enabling sustainable, digital, and socially innovative initiatives.

3.Increased financing/investment opportunities and enhanced support mechanisms to help social innovation projects access funding, promoting equity and sustainable development in line with the EU-LAC Global Gateway Investment Agenda.

4. Improved collaboration and networking opportunities among EU-LAC public-private initiatives and global social innovation programmes, creating a robust framework for the Global Gateway.

Potential for mainstreaming

The Social Accelerator has strong potential for mainstreaming because it develops transferable tools, methodologies and partnership models that can be embedded in wider social innovation, entrepreneurship and territorial development strategies across Latin America and the Caribbean. By combining Social Labs, capacity-building, competitive funding, digital platforms and public-private dialogue, the project generates practical approaches that can be adopted by public institutions, innovation hubs, civil society organisations and support structures beyond the project lifetime.