EU to fund with 10M € initiatives for social innovations across Europe
What is social innovation?
A concept with many meanings, social innovation includes all those changes and actions that let develop new ideas, services and models to better address social issues. Social innovation is promoted by public and private actors, including civil society, to improve social services.
The new call for funding social innovation
The European Commission is commited to help Member States in developing new social innovation approaches. According to this, a new call (“Social innovations for a fair green and digital transition”) for funding has been recently published by the European Commission. Its general objective is to develop and test integrated and inclusive social innovation approaches – in schools or training centres, at work or in local communities, or other relevant environments - to foster the inclusiveness and (perceived) fairness of the twin green and digital transition. The idea is to promote social innovation approaches that can raise awareness and acceptance of the green and digital transitions, and support the deployment and use of new green or digital technologies, support and accelerate the change towards more sustainable behaviours, and strengthen employability in green and digital economies.
The eligible activites to be funded
Activities that can be funded include:
- Capacity building activities;
- Awareness and dissemination actions;
- Actions aiming at creating and improving networks, exchanging good practices;
- Actions developing and testing integrated and social innovation approaches to address some of the challenges and risks related to the digital and green transitions
- Feedback to policy makers at local, regional, national and EU level;
- Training (incl. on-the-job) and job matching activities;
- Communication campaigns targeting specific social groups.
Funding and deadlines
The new call for proposals aims at funding 15 to 20 projects to be proposed by public or private bodies established in EU Member States or countries associated to the ESF+ and with the statute of non-profit organisations, public authorities (national, regional, local), international organisations, universities, educational institutions, research centres or companies. Submission deadline is 2 August 2022. Total budget for the new European call is EUR 10 million, funded by the EaSI strand of the European Social Fund+ (ESF+).
In the last issue of CallforEurope Weekly Magazine we published an extensive synopsis on the new EC Call for funding social innovation.
