The team at Social Good Accelerator corralled 20 projects from across Europe to take part in the ‘Social Innovation Village’, a new initiative for 2018’s Web Summit. On 6 November, the Social Innovation Community project took up its exhibition space and started spreading the good word.

Our main goal was to present the Social Innovation Declaration to senior decision makers.

First, we went up on stage to discuss the Declaration with Carlos Moedas, EU Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, Portuguese Minister of Administrative Modernisation Maria Manuel Leitão Marques and President of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Isabel Mota.

And then we gave copies of the Declaration to Moedas, Marques and French Secretary of State for Digital Affairs, Mounir Mahjoubi.

Commissioner Moedas’ department is responsible for designing the next €100bn EU research and innovation funding programme. So we were thrilled when he signalled his support for the Declaration.

What’s next?

High level endorsement is great, but our work isn’t over yet. Our main goal is to influence negotiations on the next EU budget and programmes. We believe social innovation is important in helping Europe to tackle societal challenges and promote cohesion and social rights. We hope to persuade more MEPs and politicians in European member states to support our policy ideas as negotiations continue over the next few months.

You can help us by signing the SIDeclaration - as over 600 people and organisations in 25 EU countries (and many more beyond) have so far. And if you’d like more information on what we’re doing, or to help us make our case to MEPs and EU member states, please get in touch - we’d love to hear from you.

@mad_gabes

@sophsasophist

Nesta is a partner in the Social Innovation Community project, funded by Horizon 2020, which produced the #SIDeclaration.