SEED. Competence centres for social innovation

SEED stimulates and supports the establishment of four competence centres for social innovation in Italy, Greece, Romania, and Slovenia, respectively, where researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and civil servants will work together to create public and open infrastructure capable of supporting national European Social Fund (ESF) Managing Authorities (MAs) in developing internally the competences to foster the development of social innovation in their countries as a fundamental asset for sustainable growth.

ESF MAs will also receive support in mainstreaming social innovation in the national innovation ecosystems through developing efficient guidance to promoters and stakeholders for their engagement and for an overall capacity-building support. 

To achieve these objectives, SEED, by taking into account the priority needs of national ESF MAs, will engage social innovation actors with diversified ecosystems to design and implement social innovation competence centres based on four priorities/challenges for the whole consortium and for each country. In detail:

• support the ESF MA in addressing social innovation as a driver for public-sector innovation (Italy);
• support the ESF MA in promoting the culture of digital social innovation (Slovenia);
• support the ESF MA in recognising, re-connecting, and institutionalising social innovation (Greece);
• support the ESF MA in exploiting social innovation for local communities development (Romania).

Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini is mainly involved in the analysis of the institutional contexts and co-design and implementation of the competence center.