Making the SEAP happen! Funding Instruments for Social Economy and the Competence Centres for Social Innovation

On December 13th, 2022, Better Incubation organised the second webinar dedicated to the Social Economy Action Plan.

This time, with the support of DG EMPL, we focussed the conversation on the available funding instruments for social economy and the role the National and European Competence Centres for Social Innovation have in Europe to promote and enable impact-driven innovation.

00_Better Incubation SEAP Webinar 2_13 December 2022_Chiara Davalli

Dana Verbal, DG EMPL, provided a comprehensive overview of the available funding programmes. She touched upon the following ones: ESF+, ERDF, InvestEU and the Social Inclusive Finance Technical Assistance. She highlighted relevant funding streams for BSOs and incubators.

She also mentioned the Social Economy Gateway, that as of Summer 2023, will act as the main information point about EU funding programmes, EU policy, guidance documents and studies, facts and figures, best practice examples, links to relevant networks and organisations and capacity building resources such as webinars. It will also include country pages to provide country specific information.

01_2022-12-13 SEAP_ Better incubation webinar_Dana VERBAL OK

Risto Ravio, DG EMPL, presented the comprehensive framework for social innovation defined by ESF+ and explained the role the national competence centres for social innovation will have in promoting and enabling social innovation across Europe. As also mentioned in the previous presentation, many funding programmes for social economy and social innovation are run by regional and national managing authorities, so it is important to create the right environment to generate appropriate impact. As European Member States present different maturity levels in this regard, 6 international consortia have been funded for the period 2021-2023 to support the creation of the national cometence centres through international collaboration, mutual learningn aand capacity building.

02_Social Innovation competence centres 13 Dec 2022_Risto Ravio

The webinar closed with a presentation dedicated to FUSE project, one of the 6 networks of national competence centres for social innovation covering the following countries: Portugal, Ireland, Bulgaria and Cyprus.

Grainne Smith, GENIO Ireland, presented the consortium and briefly showed where the different countries are in the definition of the national blue prints/agendas for social innovation

03_FUSE overview__IR PT_better incubation WK_13.12.2022_Grainne Smith

If you missed the webinar, you can watch the recordings here.