About
The SIPlus project aims to establish national social innovation competence centres in order to make them able to support Managing Authorities in planning and implementing subsidy programs for boosting social innovation, to support social innovators in order to benefit the most from these programs and to support other competence centres via networking and knowledge exchange activities in order to help them be more effective on the above-mentioned fields.Taking into consideration the ongoing discussion about social innovation in academia, individualised capacity building is intended. This means that the project breaks down the results and policy recommendations from research into practical approaches, tools and instruments for practitioners implementing the ESF programmes.
Starting from a mapping of projects, initiatives, models and approaches that foster and promote social innovation (e.g. EaSI or ESF but also LEADER, HORIZON, Interreg projects) as well as analysis of the strength and weakness of social innovation in the participating member states, a shared strategy for boosting social innovation is going to be developed.
In addition to this, transnational knowledge transfer is a key element in this project, especially when it comes to exchange of experience, mutual inspiration and learning, and capacity building.
One of the main objectives of the SIPlus project is the implementation of National Competence Centers, aims to build capacities of key stakeholders for social innovation through professional support. Therefore, National Competence Centres in Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia are implemented during the project duration.