Innovation Exchange @ SIX Summer School 2009 – day 1
Lisbon – what a great city!
Innovation Exchange is currently attending the Social Innovation Exchange Summer School in Lisbon – a great celebration of social innovation around the world and also a forum to discuss the current challenges in light of the global economic situation.
The day kicked off with a visit to AEIPS which is an organisation that provides supported employment opportunities for people with mental illness. It helps people to choose, obtain and maintain employment; facilitating integration into the labour market. If you want to find out more about their work, check them out here. They do it so well, I’m sure we could learn from them.
We then headed off to the headquarters of the host organisation – Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. After a short welcome, we moved onto a global tour of social innovation! This involved breakout sessions discussing social innovation in 5 continents. One of the key themes of the session I attended on Europe was how do we build productive relationships with the government? How do we seize this opportunity given the attitude? Should we be thinking about a new role for government? How do we design a new architecture that supports innovation? There seems to be recognition of the need to socialise the ‘market’. But (and please excuse the irony), is there now a need to socialise the government? Other key themes included funding social innovation and scaling social innovation.
Looking forward to day two!
I think it would be really great to pick up the theme of the issue of mental illness and employment at the Festival of Ideas. It’s such a huge step on the road to recovery but so many employers are scared of employing someone with a history of mental illness when very often they have nothing to worry about. There’s something in the changing of attitudes and perhaps having a portal of job opportunities who are happy to support and employ someone with a mental illness, who can then go onto pursue whatever career they choose.