Vastus

Dear Sandra,

Dear Evelin,

I am writing to request your approval for the participation of the implementer of Component 4 "Strengthening civil society through social innovation" in study visit to Torino (Italy).

Thank you in advance for your feedback,

Olga

Approval request

Participant: Evelyn Valtin, Swiss-Estonian Cooperation Program Social Innovation component coordinator, National Foundation of Civil Society

Date and place: 05.-07.11.2024 Torino, Italy

Event: ‘ESF+ SI ecosystem, collaboration model between key stakeholders – analysis of a local urban social innovation ecosystem’

Costs: 250 euros, including daily subsidies, travel insurance, travelling to and from airports. Accommodation and flight tickets are going to be covered by the organisers of the event.

Overview of the event:

The onsite study visit is organized by the Social Innovation Community of Practice (SI CoP), in close collaboration with the Italian ESF+ authorities and National Competence Centre. It aims to better understand the types of collaborations and partnerships that create and strengthen social innovation ecosystems. The event will be exploring the development of the social innovation ecosystem at national level across Italian cities, as well as at local level in Torino, analysing the enabling factors from both financial and non-financial perspectives. It will delve deeper into the role of local stakeholders and institutions as accelerators of these processes. For example, a some of the sessions are going to focus on enhancing urban social ecosystems: legislative instruments promoting collaborative governance; also, how Living Labs can help foster the development of the urban social innovation ecosystem. Legislative instruments are going to looked at through case studies: Co-programming of social services for the City of Torino, Local regulation - Urban commons.

Purpose for participating:  Study visit with the good practises of collaboration model between key stakeholders in social innovation ecosystem is going to provide us valuable learnings to better understand what are the different range of approaches, possibilities, success factors and more to be able to have better cooperation, especially with local government and public sector. Within the Swiss-Estonian programme social innovation component, we are focussing on raising awareness and competences of social innovation in between all the sectors, as well as supporting the ecosystem and SI network. There are several activities planned where sectors should be brought together to work for the better solutions, as well as some for the social inclusion themes. Currently, there are still several challenges getting public sector on board in Estonia, especially on local government level, with the support of legislation or changing the legislation accordingly. Within the framework of the Swiss-Estonian cooperation programme social innovation component development of the competences of the specialist of National Foundation of Civil Society is relevant. Therefor participating at the study visit is useful for learning more on that matter.  Added value is to be able to share Estonian topical best practices, current situation and the outlook of Swiss-Estonian Cooperation Program. Moreover, there are opportunities to create new connections, to network and to bring back knowledge for sharing within the programme component and with the other actors in social innovation related field in Estonia. 

National Foundation of Civil Society specialists working on Swiss-Estonian Cooperation Program Social Innovation Component have joined with the Community of the Practice that is a mutual learning and capacity-building activities focus on key policy areas of the ESF+ and emerging socio-economic and political challenges to be addressed in the context of five Communities of Practice (hereafter “CoP) and two networks: Employment, Education, and Skills; Social Inclusion; Social Innovation; Migrant Integration; Material Support; ALMA network; EU Roma.

Activities of the CoPs and Networks

• * Restart the platform for transnational communication.

• * Store information and make sure it is accessible, easy to navigate, and retrievable.

• * Engage and respond to the needs of the community.

• * Provide a space where members can collaborate, discuss the main topics, and learn from each other.

• * Be efficient, minimising the time and resources required to maintain and update knowledge.

• * Provide a basis for upward communication: valuable experience can be collated and shared in a suitable format that can be disseminated externally through the newsletter, website, and social media channels.

According to our previous experience and current one, we are finding the Community of the Practice activities being important and resourceful in many way, therefor encaging their organized events and activities are adding value to our goals for the Swiss-Estonian Cooperation Program and in Estonia.