European Community of Practice

Sharing experiences and knowledge between people in different countries taking part in the Innovation & Mainstreaming Community of Practice (CoP)  has helped to identify management practices in several ESF programmes that have clearly had a positive impact on quality and innovation in the projects and action that they support.

In essence three factors have made social innovation possible in EQUAL:

This was a summary of a study presented at Grenoble Forum on Social Experimentation in Europe. It's an analysis, almost a balance about social experiments in Europe in the last few years. It was done specifically for the meeting in Grenoble but the initiative came from the French Presidency and the French High Commission for Active Solidarity against Poverty.

Here is a document with all the workshop conclusions and a reflection about the event by the organisers. Feedback welcome!

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.

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.

discussing and sharing problems and doubts with the new facilitators enriched the way I see nthe future and the sustainability of the COP - perhaps new comers recognise value to the content of this COP and will keep it alive and nuture it sustainig it behond EQUAL