In the EU project "Building Capacity for a Sustainable Society," the four countries—Spain, France, Latvia, and Sweden—will spend two years gathering, sharing, and developing knowledge about social innovation. Forum for Social Innovation Sweden the effort to develop tools and methods for knowledge sharing and cross-border collaboration. Best practices for methods, tools, programs, and approaches to promote social innovation are now being compiled.
Building Capacity for a Sustainable Society (BuiCaSuS) aims to promote transnational cooperation and mutual learning in order to establish or consolidate national centers of excellence for social innovation in the four participating countries, in line with current and future program activities under the European Social Fund and the EaSI program.
Through Forum for Social Innovation Sweden with Reach for Change and Inkludera, Sweden is represented in BuiCaSuS. The project is divided into five sub-projects, with Forum for Social Innovation Sweden sub-project four, alongside France and Avise as co-leads. Subproject four focuses specifically on the following questions: What tools and methods are needed to build capacity for social innovation? What best practices exist that can inspire others and be replicated?
“We are working to establish a systematic exchange of best practices among stakeholders in the public and private sectors as well as civil society—to demonstrate how the ecosystem for social innovation can be supported,” says Anna Tengqvist, coordinator at Forum for Social Innovation Sweden is leading the work within BuiCaSuS.
The subproject is intended to serve as a knowledge platform or knowledge hub, created through a collaborative approach and the exchange of experiences regarding various case studies and best practices among the partner countries. Particular emphasis is placed on experiences where social innovation has had a longer lifespan, such as in Sweden or France.
Within the BuiCaSuS project, two thematic areas of societal challenges have been identified as the most interesting to focus on—spatial segregationandsocial exclusion—though other themes related to a sustainable society are also of interest.
Forum for Social Innovation Sweden the other partners in BuiCaSuS are now seeking and compiling best practices—including tools, methods, other approaches, and programs—that support or promote social innovation in the four countries through a nomination process and survey. The selected best practices will be presented at national and transnational meetings.