International expert meeting on innovative social services

Workshop

The workshop took place on 8^th May in Budapest with the participation of experts from Norway, Denmark, Italy, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria. The workshop began with a short introduction to the InnoServ project, followed by a provocative presentation on two different Central-European prizes for social innovation. Both presentations triggered discussion on the main criteria of innovation and its various cross-country and cross-cultural perceptions. With the help of the short videos demonstrating innovative social services throughout Europe experts reflected on the main differences of the social and political conditions, contexts in which the shown activities are embedded, the diverse understanding of specific services and approaches to service-users. One of the participants raised the question “Is social innovation a discovery or is it invented within the specific local community?” As all experts agreed the local aspect is crucial and it is worth to observe how new ideas are put in practice Europe-wide. However in order to make them more transferable across borders as well as across different fields of social services, deeper, wider share of experiences would be important.

Párbeszéd Háza Budapest, Horánszky utca 20