The Commission is promoting and supporting once again social innovations with a brochure featuring one example of social innovation from each EU country.

Social innovations are new ideas that meet social needs, create social relationships and form new collaborations. These innovations can be products, services or models addressing unmet needs more effectively. They contribute to bring forward new responses to pressing social demands to improve human well-being.

The 27 initiatives presented in this publication tackle a range of social challenges, from unemployment and lack of skills, to inadequate care services and social isolation. Yet, despite their diversity, they all have one thing in common: they affect people’s lives and communities for the better.

These examples provide a flavour of inspiring practices on social innovation that could be broadly disseminated and scaled up, particularly in the context of the future European Social Fund Plus which explicitly promotes innovative actions, calling on Member States to support social experimentation projects, bottom-up approaches and partnerships that have a social core.

Get inspired and read about the people who bring social innovation to life.