16/10/2026
It was a great opportunity to participate in the Social Innovation Forum 2026 last week!
We are grateful to the Social Innovation+ Initiative for making meaningful participation possible, and for reminding us that it’s OK to fail. ✨
Failure is an essential part of learning. It helps us grow, keep trying, and become more resilient. As Dr. Laura Girlevičienė, director of the European Social Fund Agency, highlighted during the forum:
"Social innovation needs space to try something new... That means accepting uncertainty. We need room to test, learn and adjust and sometimes to admit that an idea did not work as we expected. [...] And good evidence also means being honest when something does not work. Not every experiment will succeed, and not every successful pilot will be scaled up."
Social innovation is a vital driver of positive societal impact — placing citizen voice, continuous learning, and human rights at the heart of European policy.
As Rosa Martínez Rodríguez, Secretary of State for Social Rights (Spain), powerfully emphasised:
"Europe will be neither competitive nor secure if it does not protect people's rights. Social innovation is not a cost. It is a strategic investment in Europe's future." 💡
For social innovation to truly transform society, we must address a persistent challenge: the involvement of people with lived experience, including youth, learners, and educators, is widely recognised as vital - yet it still happens far too rarely.
Meaningful participation does not happen automatically. It requires capacity, expertise, time, and resources.
This is something we must keep front and centre as negotiations unfold for the next EU budget (2028–2034). If we want participation to be more than a principle on paper, we need to invest in the structures and support that make it possible in practice.
Let’s keep working together across Europe to build inclusive systems where every voice helps shape our shared future! 🇪🇺✨
Photographer: Sophie Hugon.
