The CoRá project is mapping the ecosystem of Social Innovation in Ireland

CoRá is the Irish dimension of the EU-funded FUSE Project. Social Innovations Rethink Ireland and Genio have come together to build Ireland’s first National Competence Centre on Social Innovation which is being developed to shape policy and inform the future development of social innovation in Ireland.

This project is co-funded by the European Commission and the Department of Community and Rural Development and is informed by partners in Ireland, Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Portugal which work together on the overall FUSE Project. Each consortium partner is undertaking research to map out the current ecosystem of social innovation in their own country. Together they will come together to share learnings, and challenges and support each other to build a fertile landscape for social innovation.

As Deirdre Mortell, CEO of Rethink Ireland explains, in the Irish Times article “The EU is putting a huge emphasis on social innovation, as a way of tackling social challenges across Europe,” Mortell adds. “We partnered with Genio and similar organisations in the other countries on the project. The aim of the project is to look at what’s there in terms of social innovation in Ireland and what needs to be done to take it to the level where it needs to be. It’s also about increasing awareness of social innovation and building capacity for it in each country.”

Research on the strengths and needs of social innovation in Ireland was carried out by Lucas Olmedo, a researcher based at the Department of Food Business and Development at University College Cork. The report found that there is an early-stage social innovation ecosystem in existence in Ireland but that more could be done to support it. “There are lots of social innovators and entrepreneurs doing a lot of things to tackle the big challenges facing society,” Olmedo notes. “There is some support for them, but it needs to be developed much further.”

Read the full Research project here and visit the CoRá website here