Impact4you.eu: Digital social innovation initiatives to the public

In an effort to come up with solutions to the societal challenges that policy makers and current solutions are not able to tackle, social innovations are popping up as new types of services and products. In the recent years social innovations have been accelerated with the digital layer, which is proving to be especially effective in bringing people together, offering tools for self-organization and providing a democratic space for everyone to contribute to solving these especially wicked problems.

Funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Program and as a part of the “ICT for Societal Challenges” pillar of the European Digital Agenda, the Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation (CAPS) projects can be viewed as publically funded examples of digital social innovation that are promoted by different types of actors organized into transnational consortia. Though their focus vary, they all aim at tackling societal challenges by use of a platform and other digital tools. In addition, most of these projects include a relevant research agenda.

Launched in 2013, these projects support environmentally aware, grassroots processes and practices that aim to share knowledge; to achieve changes in lifestyle, production and consumption patterns; and aim to set up more participatory democratic processes. They can be divided into three types of projects: research projects for grassroots experiments and pilots, seed funding projects and support actions.

One of these support actions is Impact Assessment for Social Innovation (IA4SI), a project that is creating an impact assessment methodology for and together with the first generation of CAPS
projects. This methodology will be available for use by the following CAPS projects as well as other projects dealing with digital social innovation in Europe and beyond. To collect data for the impact assessment, IA4SI developed three tools: the Self-Assessment toolkit for the CAPS projects themselves; the User Data Gathering Interface for the CAPS projects’ direct users; and a Citizen Engagement Platform, Impact4you.eu, for the society at large.

The Impact4you.eu platform wants to open up the CAPS community to the wider audience and make the European projects more understandable by providing a no-nonsense summary of each CAPS project, the problems they are tackling, the tools they have developed and the audiences they are targeting. The platform is also a place where citizens who are new to social innovation can learn about the topic, the initiatives and approaches to tackle societal challenges. For those already familiar with the topic, the platform offers a space to read about new initiatives, a place to start discussions on burning questions and a channel to get in contact with the CAPS projects. In order to improve the services and tools of the projects and improve the scope of future CAPS projects, Impact4you.eu hopes to collect the feedback of citizens on this platform at the bottom of each CAPS description.

So please take a moment to read about these initiatives on www.impact4you.eu and share your opinion by clicking on the red button. We would love to hear from you!

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