On May 22nd and 23rd, another coordination meeting of the “Social(i)Makers” project partners took place in Berlin. The Foundation was represented by Dorota Nowicka and Jacek Ostrowski, as well as our external expert, Mirella Panek-Owsiańska. Several thematic meetings were held over the course of two days. On Tuesday, the partners summarized work on the “SI Design Training Course,” which has been ongoing for the past few months. Discussions included the choice of platform for the online portion of the course, the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), as well as the design of the course’s promotional campaign, which is scheduled to begin in August of this year (the course will open in September and be available until December). The most important promotional events in each partner country will be festivals, which are intended to attract all stakeholders in social innovation – residents, organizations, public institutions, investors, etc. The first day of the Partner Meeting concluded with a visit to the headquarters of Kiron, a social enterprise operating an e-learning platform with university courses, dedicated entirely to immigrants. The MOOC courses are free and publicly available, making them very effective. They are enjoying enormous interest among immigrant communities, especially women, who, for various reasons, are often unable to pursue traditional forms of education. On Tuesday, the first part of the day was devoted to a workshop with representatives of partner institutions (involved in the work of the Technical Advisory Board and the Political Advisory Board) and external experts invited by each institution. Participants explored the use of new public procurement tools, namely innovative public procurement (PIP) and pre-commercial public procurement (PPP), in addressing social challenges. The project was based on a case study: the Italian city of Carpi, which faced a number of challenges related to the textile industry, which is the mainstay of employment in the city, and the need to integrate its large immigrant community. The teams developed several different variants of innovative procurement and sample proposals. The Berlin Project Coordination Meeting of the “Social(i)Makers” project concluded with a meeting of the Steering Committee members.
Now, it’s time to focus on organizing a campaign and festival promoting the “Social Innovation Design Training Course.” We will be working on this in collaboration with the second Polish project partner, the Regional Social Policy Center in Poznań.
