26. Sep. 2018

Kick off meeting in Budapest 26-27 Sept 2018

On 26-27 September the partners of the project met to prepare the upcoming activities. Core topics of the meeting icluded an overview of prominent examples of social impact investments (SII) - also including Social Impact Bonds (SIB) - which are a hot and controversial topic.

Working together with ASHOKA as partners in Austria, ZSI will develop a number of activities. Acting as workpackage leader, ZSI will guide and support the partners to acomplish a solid identification of policy niches in the field. Moreover it looks on the scoial entrepreneurs and their experiences by using interviews, focus groups and workshops.

Also the now existing social impact investment initiatives and experiments will be approached to learn about feasible and balanced models which can complete the current policy portfolio addressing social entrepreneurship in the Danube Region countries. While punctually some experiments show good success, overall the experience of the stakeholders in the region is limited. A certain readiness of the actors and a broad room for experimentation builds an interesting and perhaps also solid basis to kick off SII initiatives. Nevertheless in many cases improving employment situation and supporting the labour market is a core issue for social entrepreneurship, a better definition and knowledge of social impact will help to streamline the development and the investment measures.

Related Articles:

• Project: Leveraging Finance 4 positive Social Change
• News: EU-funded Interreg Project Finance for Social Change starts crucial phase
• News: Towards improving the social impact investment market in the Danube region

Tags: Danube Region, impact, impact financing, social change