WEBINAR: Enhancing Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship in the Baltic Sea Region
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WEBINAR: Enhancing Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship in the Baltic Sea Region

Join us for an engaging webinar exploring how technology and artificial intelligence can drive social innovation and create positive societal impacts

What to Expect:

Part 1: AI & Social Impact

– Organizational Implementation: Get a glimpse of AI for good strategies, explore impactful AI projects, and access resources tailored for non-profits and social enterprises.

– Co-Creation and Collaboration: Discover the role of co-creation in integrating AI into organizations and society.

Discussion: What problems in your organization or your community can you solve with AI?

 Part 2: Tech & AI Impact Ecosystems

– Compare traditional and emerging tech ecosystems in the EU.

– Examine Europe’s strategic role in tech-driven social innovation.

– Explore opportunities for collaboration in the EU tech ecosystem.

Discussion: What part of the European AI Ecosystem could you play?

Why Attend?

Gain insights, practical knowledge, and inspiration to engage in tech and AI initiatives for societal benefit.

Together, we can foster a collaborative and innovative ecosystem in Europe.

Our speakers: 

Tobias Oertel, Adviser AI & Digitisation, zukunft zwei Innovationsagentur; Berlin.

Marc Sunarjo, Expert Social Innovation & Social Entrepreneurship, zukunft zwei Innovationsagentur, Berlin.

Register your free spot here: https://www.eventbrite.de/e/webinar-tech-ai-for-impact-resist-tickets-1100934658199?aff=oddtdtcreator

Webinar on inspiring civil society cases from Finland and Estonia, 21 January 2025

Webinar on inspiring civil society cases from Finland and Estonia,
21 January 2025

Join us for an engaging webinar on January 21, 2025, featuring inspiring civil society cases from Finland and Estonia. Discover how these communities are driving impactful change, fostering sustainability, and building stronger collaborations. Gain valuable insights and practical lessons to empower your own initiatives in creating a better future.

The webinar presents two interesting civil society cases related to urban gardening, circular economy and community building.

Our fantastic speakers are:
Tuomas Ilander, Founder of Blokgarden Community Garden
Lauri Mei, Paranduskelder community maker/repair space

Please share below shortly an interesting civil society case from your region/country! The case could be related to any grassroot activities that have made an impact to behaviour of people and local social and ecological sustainable development. Mention the name of the region/city and country in your comment.



WEBINAR What is the role of civil society in making sustainability transition?
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WEBINAR
What is the role of civil society in making sustainability transition?

Local authorities have a crucial role in driving resilience – societal ability to adapt and react – but due to complexity of the challenges, they need to mobilise all levels of society to co-create solutions that enable a needed change in our traditional ways of doing things. Various civil society actors have an important role in helping society to cope with external disturbances.

The first WMT! webinar provides an outlook on different dimensions of transition management and role of civil society actors in eco-social sustainability.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKyiVzOGdCE&ab_channel=DDFoundation

The webinar is part of the We make transition! – project that aims to engage a number of regional and local authorities, civil society and other innovation actors from the Baltic Sea region to learn about transition management and role of various civil society actors in fostering eco-social sustainability. The project will utilise the Transition Arena method as a tool to co-create new solutions with actors representing different levels of society.

PRESENTATION “Sustainability transitions and civil society?“

Presentation

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Comment to presentation

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CASE STUDIES

Svartlamon
Experimental sustainable housing district

Download PDF

Rebuilders
Cooperative facilitating transition

Download PDF

Please note also the following webinar dates during this spring:

More about the project

COLLABORATION TOOL Canva.com

COLLABORATION TOOL
Canva.com

It is not unlikely to consider Canva.com as a tool for graphic design. Because it is! But being efficient in your work and co-work with colleagues and other stakeholders often includes also creative pathways and a pinch of lateral thinking. With that said – in this article we will give a few ideas how to use Canva.com to make your collabs run more professionally, and simultaneously support your efforts for great design.

What is Canva.com?

Canva is by far the best free browser-based creativity tool out there. It lets you create all sorts of designs, from infographics to flyers, ebooks and social media posts. And even if you have almost no clue about graphic design, it is made in a very intuitive way and will make you seem like the next best designer. The thousands of templates you can find in Canva make it easy for any non-arts-and-craftsy person to create professional-looking designs from scratch. They also have a large portfolio of graphic elements and stock photography that you can spruce up your creations with.

canva3

What are the main features?

Surely, each of us will be interested in their own visual outcomes, but here are a few that will be especially useful for a new enterprise or a social impact organization. Here’s what you can create in Canva.com:

  • logos
  • social media post designs and header images
  • newsletters for Mailchimp
  • restaurant menus
  • flyers
  • art for your merch
  • presentations and much more!

Let me tell you one secret. Many would be slightly put off by the limitations that non-pro version poses.

But if you are a non-profit (an NGO, a social impact entity) then Canva will generously gift you a free Pro version with no time limitations. Just check their Nonprofits section and follow their instructions.

How to use Canva.com in collaborative settings?

I mentioned already that it is full of amazing templates, didn’t I? Which is why the first suggestion for fostering a collaboration through this platform is pretty simple. Just dig through the vast amount of pre-made templates and see if there is something that catches your eye. For example, a Kanban template to help organize your team’s work!

kanban

The second feature that can make your collaborations and workflow smoother is the possibility to store all the designs in one place. It ensures that any of your colleagues or collaborators can access the created content and use the company templates any time without the need to ask the creator to share it. Imagine it like a shared Google drive storage, but just for design files and a possibility to directly copy and edit these files.

canva

The third, but the most amazing feature is connected to collaborating in live time. Any of designs can be accessed by the whole team and edited simultaneously on the go. Imagine colleagues putting together a presentation where each person writes down information about their field of expertise. All at the same time. Or commenting on design options created by someone while the person directly adjusts the necessary changes. Or even better – creating a design and assigning parts of the document to be filled or changed by someone on your team.

Hopefully, these ideas will help to develop a sustainable and efficient workflow, may it be for collaborating with your fellow colleagues or with external stakeholders and experts! 

This publication has been prepared within SENBS project No. 2020- 1-EE01-KA204-077999. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

Check the Social Economy Talks podcasts!
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Check the Social Economy Talks podcasts!

“Social Economy Talks” is a Podcast series from Social Economy Europe about the most relevant upcoming issues in the social economy sphere. It will follow a journey of discovery (narrated by team member Nicholas Clark) aimed at elucidating social economy success stories and roles regarding the green transition, diversity and migrant entrepreneurship, digitalisation, COVID recovery and promoting human capital, among many other things. Interviews with important organisations on the ground as well as relevant policy players will give a digestible introduction to the social economy in practice.

 

In this very first episode of 2022, Laura Almirante (Communications Coordinator at SEE) and Sara Bombardieri (Policy and Communications Assistant) talk about the implementation of the Social Economy Action Plan and the steps that have been taken in the first quarter of this new year.

The Social Economy Action Plan, one of a kind, was presented last December by the EU Commission. This meant a great celebration for the social economy community, who has worked hard and constantly for 14 years to achieve the publication of this Action Plan. Despite being a great milestone, this is only the beginning as the plan has now to be transformed into concrete actions.

Some of the main events taken place in the first quarter of 2022 were the GECES meeting concerning the implementation of the SEAP, the EU Industry Days 2022, the launching of the EU Commission Survey on transition pathways, the event on the social economy and the future of Europe celebrated in Paris, the Accessibilitech event, the Civil Society Days, the visit to Madrid of a 10 MEP’s delegation and the SEIG hearing towards a Council Recommendation on Social Economy.

As you can see (and hear) 2022 is the time to scale up for the European Social Economy Community and all the events and milestones this podcast is about, are just the beginning of an amazing year for the Social Economy and the future of Europe.

LISTEN HERE:

 

https://soundcloud.com/user-704418876/episode-16-see-activities-during-first-quarter-of-2022?utm_source=clipboard&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=widget&utm_content=https%253A%252F%252Fsoundcloud.com%252Fuser-704418876%252Fepisode-16-see-activities-during-first-quarter-of-2022

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This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

 

Social Enterprise Series 2022
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Social Enterprise Series 2022

The Social Enterprise Series is a 10-week in-depth learning program designed to educate future global changemakers about the practical components of establishing or growing a thriving social enterprise. It is completely free of charge and invites everyone willing to learn more to join all or selected workshops from 13th April to 15th June online.

register

Designated industry experts will walk you through the key components of building an enterprise that has a positive social impact, and citizens residing in Australia can put their new skills to work by crafting a video pitch for the chance to win the Social Enterprise Award: $10,000 to kickstart their project.

The following workshops will take place from 9AM – 11AM EET (4PM – 6PM AEST):

  • The change you seek, April 13th
  • Understanding the issues, April 20th
  • Ideation for impact, April 27th
  • Designing your business, May 4th
  • Building your tribe, May 11th
  • Pitching, May 18th
  • Show me the money, May 25th
  • Legal considerations for social entrepreneurs, June 1st
  • The road is long, June 8th
  • Crowdfunding for social enterprises, June 15th

The Social Enterprise Series is organized by Start Some Good in collaboration with Australian Catholic University. The cost is fully subsidized and open to university students, staff and the broader community. Topics are delivered via livestream to a national audience.

More information about the course available HERE.

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This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

Webinar: Social enterprise partnerships with corporates – succesful cases from the UK
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Webinar: Social enterprise partnerships with corporates – succesful cases from the UK

Social Entrepreneurs in Denmark project Rummelig Genstart hosted a webinar Successful English Social Enterprise Partnerships with Corporates Thursday 17 March 2022.

You can see the webinar here

Background for the webinar.
England is one of the countries in the world with the most growing sector for social enterprises. This applies both in relation to political interest and in relation to the activities initiated by various actors to support social enterprises. This includes e.g. social investment, support schemes and accelerator and competency programs. The UK also has one of the world’s strongest advocates and member organizations for social enterprises – Social Enterprise UK, which has done a great job of building partnerships between social enterprises and private enterprises.

At the event there was presentations from inspiring examples of English social enterprises that have formed successful partnerships with traditional private enterprises.

Also Social Enterprise UK’s work to promote partnerships between corporates and social enterprises through their Buy Social Corporate Challenge campaign was presented.

The webinar is useful if you want to have further knowledge on how social enterprises and corporates can build partnerships, that can create large positive impact.
Also the webinar gives you insight in effective social enterprise business models that work really well in terms on creating positive impact.
More information on the three presenters:

Mark Gale, founder and ​Chief Executive of Gloucestershire Gateway Trust
Mark Gale is a former UK Social Entrepreneur of the Year. He has previously advised government on social inclusion, and been a national board member of the housing charity Shelter.
Gloucester Services is pioneering model of social investment, bringing to life the vision of residents of Gloucester housing estate and turning the nearby motorway into an asset through the creation of sustainable jobs and income.
The partnership between the Westmorland Family and the community development charity Gloucestershire Gateway Trust, both of whom have a stake in the business, is a great example that when companies and charities work together, they are able to create greater value than they would be able to create individually.
Gloucester Services has exceeded its charitable goals and created over 400 jobs, employing over 80 people specifically from ‘target’ communities. Making communities more resilient and supporting residents to develop their employability skills and become job ready is a goal for both the charity and the company.
The partnership is also an example of a social enterprise model that creates social value locally on a large scale.
Gloucestershire Gateway Trust: www.gloucestershiregatewaytrust.org.uk
Gloucester Services: www.gloucesterservices.com

Dr. Mick Jackson, Founder and CEO of The WildHearts Group  
Mick Jackson is a serial entrepreneur, author, ex chart-topping rock singer and the founder of The WildHearts Group – a portfolio of companies committed to creating global social change. To date, WildHearts have transformed over 1,500,000 lives globally.
Mick’s work has been recognised globally; he has received numerous honorary doctorates, been EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year and is the second only recipient of the highly prestigious Babson Social Innovation Award from the world’s top school in entrepreneurship.
The WildHearts Group is a portfolio of companies committed to creating global social change.  WildHearts has been recognised as a world leading B2B social enterprise, is Carbon Neutral, a B-Corp and a signatory to the United Nations’ Global Compact. Its activities address over 50% of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and it is recognised as one of the top 100 global businesses addressing the SDGs.
The WildHearts Group delivers office consumables business services, document management and purpose-driven talent development programmes to companies such as Nestlé, SAP, Barclays and Zurich. All its social and environmental initiatives are supported by the profits and activities from WildHearts’ businesses.
Find out more, here: https://www.wildheartsgroup.com

Jennifer Exon, Director of Business and Enterprise at Social Enterprise UK (SEUK)
Jennifer is leading on the SEUK’s corporate market building work which includes the Buy Social Corporate Challenge.  is an ambitious initiative that aims to get a group of high-profile companies to open up their supply chains to social enterprises and jointly buy in for £ 1 billion from social enterprises. Among the participating companies are i.a. SAP, Thomson & Thomson, Deloitte and PWC.an initiative seeing some of the UK’s biggest businesses open up their supply chains to social enterprises.
Jennifer is working to drive forward Social Enterprise UK´s work in building markets for social enterprises, trying to open doors and creating as many opportunities as possible for social enterprises.
Jennifer has spend over seven years at Business in the Community (BiTC) where she was working as their Enterprise and Culture Development Director. She also headed up BiTC’s arc programme which has supported the development and growth of social enterprises in some of the poorest communities in the country.
More about Buy Social Corporate Challenge at: www.socialenterprise.org.uk/corporate-challenge

 

 

Optimy: ALL-IN-ONE SOCIAL IMPACT PLATFORM
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Optimy: ALL-IN-ONE SOCIAL IMPACT PLATFORM

Empower your impact

A simple, flexible and customizable social impact platform. Designed to help you save time, be more efficient and drastically improve your social impact projects.

Thanks to more than 10 years of research and developments based on the needs of our users, we have developed the CSR platform Optimy to improve your social impact projects’ efficiency and performance. Our purpose is to equip you with the most flexible and intuitive online software, with features that match your needs and a dedicated support to reach your goals.

THE ALL-IN-ONE PLATFORM

How Optimy works

It starts with collecting valuable and relevant data to selecting projects and applicants to match your values and CSR goals. Then you need to manage all these activities, the participants, budgets, and administrative tasks. But how would you know how effective your missions were if you don’t report on them? Optimy helps you to do it all.

COLLECT

Gather data through an easy application process

SELECT

Review and select the best social impact projects quickly

MANAGE

Get an overview of your projects’ status and collaborate efficiently

REPORT

Create meaningful reports about your CSR and social impact activities

Find out more: here

European social entrepreneur and ESE – Operational course for social innovation
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European social entrepreneur and ESE – Operational course for social innovation

The European Social Entrepreneur -ESE project coordinated by CO-LABORY

During its implementation, project’s participants produced a high-quality materials and provided the best possible education for trainers, staff of participating organizations, and young people in disadvantaged situations.

ESE – Operational course for social innovation

As the project results an online platform  was developed containing training material on SE, the role of the social entrepreneur, how the funds are obtained, and which concrete tools can be used to launch a social enterprise.

“Operational course for Social Innovation” is a course aiming at the inclusion of diasadvantaged groups in society by acquiring skills and tools that wil assist them and make them valuable members, will gain more ingormation on social entrepreurship and will be able to create their own businesses. These results will be achieved through the developed materials of the course. Each module contains a theoretical and methodological part, to check and ensure the acquisition of knowledge on learners in a more practical way.

The project website also was developed with newsletters, videos, articles, information material, and the Manual on Social Entrepreneurship. Also projects results included the following:

  • The live Facebook “An opportunity towards (y) our future” to raise public awareness through the use of social media, on social entrepreneurship issues by answering questions and curiosities of the participants.
  • The virtual tour on social entrepreneurship that consists of video interviews with representatives of successful social enterprises in each partner country of the project.

Enrol now and start learning more on Social innovation: online platform

Below a brief summary of the e-course content:

Module 1 – “WHAT IS SOCIAL ENTERPRENEURSHIP” is an introduction on the basic concept of social entrepreneurship that will be followed by an interactive workshop for better understanding of the term.

Module 2 -“WHERE TO FIND FUNDINGS FOR A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE” focuses on the financial aspect of a social business, and provides information on all the funding opportunities assisting learners in their path of creating their own business.

Module 3 -“LAUNCH A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE PLAN” launches the idea of a business plan, points out the significance of a business plan and provides useful guidance on how to prepare one. This effort is strengthened with a practical workshoip for personal reflection.

Module 4 – “BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS”- In addition to the business plan in this section another useful tool is explained, business model canvas.

Module 5 – “WHO IS THE SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR”. In this module more information ad tools are shared for better understanding of the term social entrepreneur.

Module 6 – “IMPACT OF SOCIAL ENTERPRISES”-In this module the impact of social entreprises is measured by studying succesful examples of sustainable social enterprises.

All the above modules are focusing on essential topics that will enhance learners’ skills and prepare them better for the business world achieving social inclusion and personal growth

 

Learn more on project development via the following link:https://socialentrepreneur.eu/

WEBINAR Place-based Social Innovation Through Living Labs
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WEBINAR
Place-based Social Innovation Through Living Labs

Within promising community innovation practices targeting successful adoptions within communities, Living Labs are generating more and more buzz and yet there is confusion about what they are; when to use them; and what they can help us achieve.

Take a look at this webinar to gain a clearer understanding of Livings Labs as Myriam Bérubé invites Hugo Steben (Maison de l’innovation sociale) and Jean-François Jasmin (Le Laboratoire en innovation (LLio)) to share their experiences and insights from two Québec-based organizations with an approach that yields a huge potential for transformative change.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE0gllKTukU[/embedyt]

Hugo and Jean-Francois additional audience questions

Access the Slidedeck 

Background information

Today, communities are facing an array of complex social and environmental challenges. The programs we have created to address these challenges have been unable to impact in a significant way. New solutions are required. The results that are urgently needed cannot and will not be found by simply making incremental changes to our current approaches. The breakthroughs that community changemakers seek require new approaches. Social innovation has become imperative to effectively address our society’s most significant issues.

Unfortunately, inventions are many, but innovations that are successfully adopted are few, and breakthrough innovations are disruptive in nature, sometimes leading to actions meant to solve old problems ending up generating new ones.

Thus, community innovation requires not only an appreciation of the issue one is hoping to address but also a deep understanding of the unique characteristics of the community. The place and the people within it, where the innovation will be implemented.

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This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.