Latin American Social Innovation Network

LASIN aims to effectively support and promote social innovation as a means to achieve sustainable and inclusive socio-economic growth, social cohesion and equity in Latin America, through intercultural, curricular and extracurricular activities. It will achieve this by establishing Social Innovation Support Units (SISU) within the Partner Countries to promote and support University-social enterprise cooperation, social entrepreneurship and graduate employability with a particular emphasis on social innovation projects, incubation and training. A range of learning and teaching tools will be developed, at a formal level through the development of a doctoral programme and more informally through CPD training of stakeholders in social innovation as well as through books and reports and a social innovation platform – a virtual space for sharing social innovation practices and learning outcomes. The project will establish international cooperation and internationalisation through a network of SISUs across the region introducing a training, mentoring and transfer scheme to ensure that there is an effective roll-out of the scheme beyond the original partnership. In addition, the project will specifically aim to involve local communities and in particular disadvantaged groups to give them access to University facilities and strengthen the ties between HEIs and their local social environment. There are at least two HEI partners representing each Partner country, one of which has experience at delivering social innovation training and other initiatives within their country and beyond. The EU Partners have a wide experience of delivering international innovation projects and embedding social innovative initiatives within their own institutions.