European Community of Practice

On Sunday 2nd December we will be changing server. It will be better not to post anything on that day in case it gets lost in the move!

To validate new products is a way to recgonise innovation, to improve quality and to recognise its added value. In EQUAL, Portugal we put forward a very powerful mehodology to validate prodcuts based on a common reflection of authors, experts and users of the new solutions. The validation grid with the seven qulaity creiteria (innovation, empowerment, suitability, userfulness, accessibility, quality and transferability) can be found in our resources.

With the will of maximizing the public investment through the ESF we tried to identify the ingredients leading to social innovation in order to promote it.

To let emerge innovative approaches we support the use of the PCM methodology by the partnerships.

To identify the most important products we put in place a validation process in 5 steps.

We are concerned about social innovation, because – looking around Europe -  we see that our employment, training and education systems do not answer to the needs of large groups of our populations, specially disadvantage groups. So, we need to find new ways of doing things.

Social innovation is about change. Change in the ways we deliver solutions to the social problems we are facing. Social innovation is also target in disadvantage groups and their integration into the labour market. Social innovation is about combat discrimination in the labour market.

Networking is crucial to create interaction and a dynamic that induces innovation. In Portugal we have created several thematic networks with participants coming from different projects which allow a very intense sharing of experiences which was critical to go in depth into new forms of working. You can find the methodology we followed in our networks.

Partnership is a vital ingredient for innovation. To bring new and effective solutions to the multidimensional problems vulnerable groups are facing in the labour market we need the skills of the different organizations involved on answering to their diverse training and integration needs. In EQUAL developing projects in partnership composed by different partners with different competences and cultures (NGO, enterprises, training organisations etc.) was key to building bridges and creating new integrated solutions.

Todays Workshop at The European Week of Regions and Cities is an opportunity to explain further the concepts of innovation and mainstreaming developed through EQUAL into the new ESF Programmes.

Of course all of the EQUAL Themes in one way or another have been incorporated in the new ESF Programmes and we in Northern Ireland believe this will provide an excellent platform for future Innovation and Mainstreaming.

On Tuesday (17h00 - 19h00) we'll be part of a workshop at the Open Days during the European Week of Regions and Cities.