Kiri

Dear all

Hereby I’m sending a request regarding participation at a coming Social Innovation Forum in Brussels on 1^st to 2^nd of October 2025 to which my participation candidacy was approved and coverage of flight tickets and accommodation was being granted by the organiser.

Participant: Evelyn Valtin, Swiss-Estonian Cooperation Program Social Innovation component project manager

Date and place: 01.10-02.10 (3.10) Brussels, Belgium, Social Innovation Forum 2025’, and connected meetings

Event: Social Innovation Forum 2025 “How to build resilient societies across the EU through social innovation. Towards a Stronger Europe: Investing in People and Empowering Citizens for Social Change through the ESF+.”

Overview of the event: In a time of profound economic, social, and environmental transitions, the Forum will examine how social innovation can strengthen resilience, empower communities, and drive sustainable change. It will highlight how fostering innovation in skills development, employment, and social inclusion contributes to boosting Europe’s competitiveness and building a stronger, fairer future. Participants from the ESF+ Communities of Practice (Employment, Education and Skills, Material Support, Migrant Integration, Social Inclusion, Social Innovation) and the ALMA Network is going come together to this event for plenary sessions, workshops, and showcases highlighting promising social innovation practices across the EU.

Purposes for participating:  Increasing the knowledge, international cooperation and contributing to the sustainability of our actions are important to National Foundation of Civil Society. Participation is important also because of being apart mainly of Social Innovation, but also connected to Social Inclusion and Migrant Integration Community of Practices which are directly connected to our whole Swiss-Estonian Cooperation Program. During the event there are going to be opportunities to share Estonian topical best practices, current situation and also the outlook of the Cooperation Program.

More concretely, going to focus on creating new connections, networking, bringing back knowledge to be shared with the other actors in social innovation related field in Estonia and with Swiss-Estonian Cooperation Program partners. Also,

• * getting deeper knowledge from the workshop of „Social Innovation for System-Level Change“;

• * learning from different best-case practises tackling social challenges in Europe;

• * connecting with Social Innovation Representatives from across EU;

• * finding collaboration opportunities for the future sustainability of dissemination of our program’s outputs, activities and more.

There might also be an opportunity to meet one-on-one with representatives of other organisations involved in social innovation, social inclusion and migrant integration, in order to get more specific input into our projects’ activities. Also, good practices, methods and approaches regarding social innovation serve as input into awareness-raising materials (depending on the input, either an article, podcast episode, newsletter content etc).

Costs: accommodation and flight tickets are to be covered directly but ESF+. Cost of the rest is about 300 euros, including daily subsidies, travel insurance, travelling to and from airports.

Best regards,

Evelyn Valtin

Swiss-Estonian Cooperation Program project manager on Social Innovation

Social Innovation Competency Centre in Estonia

Mob: +372 513 3656

National Foundation of Civil Society

kysk.ee/en

Vabaduse plats 2, room 309, Viljandi 71020, Estonia