Zentrum für Soziale Innovation - ZSI

11/09/2026

Great to see AMS U25 Vienna featured in Coopower project’s first webinar on good practices in youth employment.

U25 is a strong Austrian example of how employment and social support can be brought together to better support young people. We also had the opportunity to hear about the approach during the Austrian study visit at the COOPOWER transnational meeting in Vienna in November 2025, where Elke Gschwandtner presented U25 as one of seven Austrian initiatives.

Her energetic and very concrete presentation made the approach particularly memorable, so it is great to see U25 now being shared with a wider audience through the webinar.

At ZSI, we organised the Vienna meeting and lead the methodological work on COOPOWER’s cooperation-based pilot actions.

🎥 Watch the webinar in the original COOPOWER post below.

Interested in staying involved with COOPOWER? You can also:

👉 Join the COOPOWER HUB: https://forms.gle/ZLDc1NixjqH9gQLd9
👉 Subscribe to the COOPOWER newsletter via the sign-up form at the bottom of the project website: https://interreg-danube.eu/projects/coopower

🎥 A new COOPOWER webinar is now available!

What can we learn from good practices across the Danube Region when it comes to supporting vulnerable young people and improving their access to employment?

The webinar presents the COOPOWER Good Practices Catalogue, bringing together 49 practices from 8 countries. Rather than simply showcasing examples, it focuses on the cooperation patterns behind them: what makes support accessible, how different sectors can work together, and which elements could be adapted in other local contexts.

The webinar also highlights selected practices from Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine, and connects the lessons learned to the next steps of COOPOWER — including Local Cooperation Incubators, pilot actions, the toolbox and future strategies.

This webinar was created by IREAS as part of Activity 2.2 – Transnational Dialogue HUB of the COOPOWER project, co-funded by the European Union through the Interreg Danube Region Programme.

👉 You can find the link to the full webinar in the comments below.

17/08/2026

𝗔 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸. 𝗔 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗱𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.

As of today, our new visual identity is officially in place across Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI) website and social media channels.

With this new visual identity, we are building on what has long represented ZSI while giving it a contemporary touch. The familiar “ZSI blue” remains, as does the basic form of the logo. With a little imagination, one can still recognise the “ZSI sail” that inspired the previous design. But the new shape also suggests something else: a compass needle.

For us, that captures what ZSI stands for: 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁, 𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. We continuously explore new topics, fields of research and ways of responding to societal challenges. Yet one idea has guided our work for decades and continues to point the way forward: 𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.

Because innovation is never only technological or economic. It changes how people live, work, interact and participate in society. Understanding and shaping that social dimension is essential if innovation is to create meaningful and sustainable change.

Our new logo reflects exactly that: 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝘂𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 - retaining elements of where we have come from while pointing towards where we want to go next.

What does the new ZSI logo evoke for you?

01/04/2026

What are our objectives?
Rethinking Connected, Innovative and Cross-Border
More details on the visual.


Our consortium: Ekonomickej univerzity v Bratislave (EUBA), Sociálni inovátori, Hochschule Burgenland, Zentrum für Soziale Innovation - ZSICentre for Social Innovation (ZSI), Verein für Soziale Innovation Wien I Social City Wien

26/02/2026

🔎 𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐈𝐧𝐩𝐮𝐭 – 𝐕𝐄𝐓 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦 (𝐔𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐚, 𝐊𝐨𝐬𝐨𝐯𝐨, 𝐌𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐨𝐯𝐚)

Are you active in the field of vocational education and training (VET) in 𝐔𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐚, 𝐊𝐨𝐬𝐨𝐯𝐨, 𝐌𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐨𝐯𝐚?

We invite representatives of VET institutions, public authorities, business and sector organisations, companies, and other relevant actors involved in VET ecosystem to participate in a short survey.

The survey is part of a study commissioned by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) to assess whether and how international VET partnerships with Austrian institutions could work in your country. It focuses on governance, coordination, partnership models, and implementation conditions.

The survey is available in English, Albanian, and Romanian (language can be selected in the survey).
👉 𝐋𝐢𝐧𝐤: https://lnkd.in/d3qyxhGE
⏳ 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞: Tuesday, 3 March at 9:00 AM

We would greatly appreciate your input and encourage you to share this within your networks.

10/02/2026

NSC visit to Vienna (9–11 Feb 2026)

To strengthen strategic understanding of research and innovation and learn from Austrian best practices, as part of the Sustainable Higher Education and Research - SHER members of Kosovo’s National Science Council and MESTI were welcomed at the Zentrum für Soziale Innovation (ZSI) in Vienna for expert discussions and later visited the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG Forschung wirkt.)

The meetings focused on research and innovation funding instruments, start-up and spin-off support and institutional approaches to knowledge transfer and university–industry collaboration, offering concrete lessons for the development of Kosovo’s future research and innovation programmes.

09/12/2025

As part of DANUBE4all Project, together with PULSAQUA, the BOKU River Lab and the EIT Community New European Bauhaus, we delivered a programme in Vienna that invited participants to rethink how communities connect with the Danube. Combining online learning with hands-on exploration, the initiative brought art, science and civic imagination into dialogue around river stewardship. 3️⃣​ ideas emerged as standout concepts:

🌊 post_flood_community – “Precipitate!”
Reimagining flood sediment as a material for artistic, site-specific installations that help communities understand and care for their river environments.

💧 RiverQuest
A mobile game linking outdoor exploration with citizen science, where players support a virtual river shaped by quests completed in the real world.

⛱️ AquaMind
A playful approach to water literacy, offering children and adults interactive ways to engage with natural waterflow and collect hydrological data.

These teams now continue their journey in Grow NEB, supported by mentoring, prototyping opportunities, and access to the wider EIT ecosystem as they further develop solutions that help rivers and communities thrive together.

02/12/2025

We’ve just finished three inspiring and productive days in Vienna with the Coopower project consortium!

From the 24th to the 26th of November, ZSI hosted partners from across the Danube region who came together to learn, exchange and co-create the pilot projects that will soon be implemented in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine all with the aim of supporting vulnerable young people.

We started with a city walk led by Martin from Wiener Nimmerland, who shared his personal story of experiencing homelessness at 15. His reflections brought forward perspectives that closely mirror the realities experienced by many of the young people at the centre of the COOPOWER pilot projects.

Later, six Austrian-based initiatives, BerufsInfoZentrum - BIZ, Buntaž, Hobby Lobby - Kein Bock auf Couch, Jugendinitiative Triestingtal, m.o.v.e on Jugendcoaching and Sindbad - Social Business, presented their work with vulnerable young people . Their openness sparked thoughtful discussions and plenty of new ideas as food for thought for co-creation workshop.

The following day and a half were all about co-creating the COOPOWER pilot projects. In hands-on sessions, the national teams mapped stakeholders, explored engagement strategies, identified barriers and worked together on finding realistic solutions. We were also joined by our associated partner Jugendinitiative Triestingtal.

Durind the second half of the last day, we had a consortium / steering committee meeting where we reviewed progress and planned next steps at project level.

A big thank you to everyone involved: Center for the Study of Democracy (Bulgaria), UBBSLA (Bulgaria), IREAS (Czech Republic), Hétfa Kutatóintézet (Hungary), Sapientia EMTE (Romania), PULSE Balkans (Serbia), Slovak Business Agency (Slovakia) and Платформа соціальних змін - Platform for social change (Ukraine)