social innovation

Víctor F. Climent, UA Employment Center Technician and Associated Professor of the University of Alicante -Department of Sociology, together with representatives from OGPI-UA, participated on 26^th November 2020, in the INSPIRE Online Final Conference, which was hosted online by Parahyangan Catholic University from Bandung (Indonesia). Víctor F. Climent delivered a summary presentation on the Best Practices examples from EU partners on social entrepreneurship support within the context of Higher Education, which has contributed to enrich Indonesian exposure to this topic and study adaptation to their own context.

The virtual event was attended by all INSPIRE consortium members from Austria, Poland and  Indonesia with an outstanding turnout of more 250 participants from all relevant stakeholders groups: students, higher education management, private sector and international agencies, including  Vincent Piket, EU Ambassador to Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam. During the conference, partners dialogued on the concepts on social entrepreneurship and its applications to Indonesia as well as reviewing the main outputs of the INSPIRE project. The conference was adorned with inspiring audio-visual material from students involved in project activities and traditional performances from Indonesia which helped to reinforce project ownership and appropriation of the results. This final conference represent a crucial milestone for the INSPIRE project, pushing towards sustainable promotion of the interplay of business-university policy within the field of social entrepreneurship in Indonesia.

From October 7^th to October 9^th, 2019, the partners of the Erasmus+ project Common Good First from South Africa, Scotland, Iceland, Norway and Spain came together in Cape Town, South Africa, in order to wrap up the project which ends on October 14^th, and to launch it into its next phase. Two professors from the University of Alicante, Diana Jareño and Guadalupe Ortiz, participated in the event to participate in the discussions and share the work that has been developed at the University of Alicante during this time.

During the past three years the partners have collected and documented social innovation cases in South Africa, working with social innovators from around the country to help them share their experiences through digital stories and profiles to be shared with the world on a digital platform. At the same time the project has been tackling the digital divide in South Africa, by increase the digital skills of the community managers and social innovators who participated in the project’s digital storytelling modules organized in several of the partner universities.

Universities are an essential agent for positive social changes in current societies. This has been evidenced in the 2nd Southeast Asian Social Innovation Network Event which, held in Bangkok (Thailand) on October 8th and 9th. During this event, and SEASIN under the moto of “Shaping Futures. New ways for Universities to make change happen", different Professors, researchers and managers from more than a dozen university centers have shared regional good practices that result in the increase of well-being in their territories.

On the 20-25th May, 4 students from South East Asia participated in the social innovation week organized by the UA as part of the SEASIN project financed under the Erasmus + programme. 

The week experience on social innovation focused on improving students’ understanding on social innovation (education, support for social innovation projects and enterprises etc.) in Europe. During the social innovation week SEASIN students met some of the social innovation projects from Alicante and speak with it main actors. They has also the chance to interacted with students from the University of North Florida (U.S) during the international social innovation course provided by Prof. Enric Bas, Director of Futurlab.

Institutional Entrepreneurship & Employability Programme manager, Víctor Climent and OGPI Senior Project Manager, Noelia López, participated on 9^th and 10^th of July 2019, in the 4^th INSPIRE Project Meeting and Mentoring workshop that took place at Cracow University of Economics in Poland. During the management meeting, the current state of project activities and results were discussed, the mid-term report and first external evaluation report were presented and participants met with social entrepreneurs and the local Department of Entrepreneurship. Indonesian partners presented the outcomes of the Business Plan Competition and selected examples of business plans of social enterprises. Most of these students’ projects focused on local resources, traditions and empowering local communities.

From May 21^st to 23^rd the University of Alicante was host to a meeting of the Common Good First (CGF) consortium, receiving partners from South Africa, Scotland, Iceland, and Norway. With only 6 months remaining in the project, the meeting was crucial to prepare for the project final event, reviewing pending activities and deliverables and discussing the launch and sustainability of the digital platform and the digital storytelling labs.

During this time, the International Project Management Office (OGPI) of the University of Alicante, with the support of professors from the Máster Universitario en Innovación Social y Dinámicas de Cambio,  organized a round table “The Spanish & European perspective and Common Good First” with social innovators and entrepreneurs from around Alicante, as well as students, academics and the CGF partners.

Thirty representatives of four Indonesian universities have visited the University of Alicante to work in the INSPIRE project, an erasmus+ project that aims to boost social entrepreneurship in Indonesian higher education institutions. Juan Llopis, Vice Chancellor of International Relations of the UA, welcomed the representatives from the Indonesian Universities involved in this project, which was launched in October 2017 and will end in 2020, aims to promote business mentality and innovation in higher education institutions in Indonesia, strengthening cooperation between the university and the company for a better employability of social entrepreneurs, and increase their relevance to the labor market and society.

The 2nd International Conference of the Latinamerican Social Innovation Network took place in Colombia last September. Organized by the Erasmus+ funded project LASIN, of which the University of Alicante is a partner, the International Conference was hosted by the Fundación Universitaria del Área Andina in Bogotá on September 26^th, and by the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín from September 27^th to 29^th.

Earlier this month the University of Alicante participated in a dynamic social innovation event that took place on September 6th and 7th at Scotland House in Brussels. The event was organized by our colleagues from Glasgow Caledonian University, with the support of the European Commission, in particular the International Capacity Building Unit. They wanted to bring together participants from various points around the globe in order to envisage, propose and, subsequently, to establish a worldwide network that explores and demonstrates how universities can support social innovation more effectively. 

This aspiration evolved through the experience, in particular, of three projects funded under the European Commission’s Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education programme, and of which the University of Alicante is a partner: Latin American Social Innovation Network, Southeast Asian Social Innovation Network, and Common Good First in South Africa.

Common Good First (CGF) partners from South Africa, Scotland, Iceland, Norway and Spain met at Rhodes University, in Grahamstown South Africa, for a project consortium meeting and community engagement symposium, from May 7^th to 9^th.