Together with the Middle Black Sea Development Agency (OKA) - a regional public body located in Samsun, Turkey - Social Innovation Community (SIC) is hosting a Summer School in Samsun from 8th until 11th of May.
The organisers will be bringing global social innovation experts to meet local practitioners and rural development experts in Samsun and hope you can join them! The event is free of charge (maximum of 50 participants).
The SIC Summer Schools are participatory learning events that happen all over Europe. Each Summer School includes inspirational keynote speakers, participatory hands-on learning through case-based workshops, site visits in the region and personal capacity building. Participants can include researchers, policy-makers, practitioners and social entrepreneurs. The SIC Schools provide a chance for you to meet your peers, learn about local and global case studies, share your challenges, and work with other participants to develop solutions together.
Regions as Social Innovations Ecosystems? Rural Ecosystem and Institutional Capacities
The Middle Black Sea Region has a geographical dilemma among 4 city centers combining urban and rural areas and a total population of 2.773.386 inhabitants. There are economical and social differences between inner regional areas. The Middle Black Sea Development Agency works to decrease inner regional differences among the region. In their Regional Innovation Strategy 2013-2023 the organisation puts emphasis on encouraging and disseminating social innovation and innovation in public services in order to raise regional awareness on social innovation.
One of the key factors of the region is that the economic background of the region is depending on agriculture. Therefore, the development of social innovation in the existing rural ecosystems is essential, but at the same time it is necessary to meanwhile encourage and foster regional transformation into increased technology investment, human resource development and integration of the society in the concept of innovation.
Key questions the Summer School will address include:
What is social innovation? How can it help us think differently? How can we use social innovation tools and techniques to solve local and regional challenges?
What are the best rural social innovation initiatives and what can we learn from them?
What can the rural development and social innovation fields learn from each other?
