"Bridging the Social : Social Engineering and Social Innovation across Europe"

This project focused on the role of social innovation within contemporary societal, health, economic, and ethical contexts. It addressed specific needs related to social innovation and the role of higher education institutions: 1) The need to better understand how social innovation is perceived, defined, and conceptualized across different national and regional contexts; 2) The need to identify similarities and differences in training profiles within the curricula of partner institutions, particularly to enhance student and staff mobility and promote exchange opportunities; 3) The need to deepen knowledge of how professionals and managers in relevant sectors perceive social innovation and social engineering, and to determine which skills would benefit graduates of the partner institutions’ bachelor’s and master’s programmes; 4) The need to identify concrete opportunities for sustainable mobility of students and teachers, such as internships and summer schools, to "bridge the social" among partner institutions, and to foster future collaborative research and publication initiatives on social innovation; 5) the need for a digital platform to help connect employers, social workers, educators, and students in the field of social work.

By implementing this project, we aimed to contribute to the debate on how social innovation shapes the professional identity of social workers, public servants, and social innovators, and to question the skills needed to engage with social innovation, as well as the role of higher education in fostering a critical perspective on these issues in light of contemporary societal, health, economic, and ethical challenges. Our operational objectives were: 1) to improve understanding of how social innovation is defined and perceived across national and regional contexts (action 1); 2) to identify similarities and differences in training profiles across partner institutions to support student and staff mobility (action 2); 3) to explore how professionals and managers perceive social innovation and social engineering, and the skills future graduates require (action 3); 4) to identify opportunities for sustainable mobility (e.g. internships, summer schools) and future research collaboration (action 4); and 5) to develop a digital platform connecting employers, teachers, students, and professionals in social work understood in a broad sense, facilitating access to internships, job offers, and CVs (action 5).

The Web Platform and Job and Internship Platform are the end results of the project "Bridging the Social, Social Engineering and Social Innovation Across Europe". The Platform offer key resources (videos and texts) and tools (Job and Internship Platform) for professionals, students and teachers, organized according to the different themes at the center of the key actions of the project: 1) Social innovation; 2) Training profiles; 3) Professional profiles; 4) Research and teaching mobility; 5) The Job and Internship platform enables employers, social workers, teachers and social work students to connect on the basis of job offers, internships and CVs, clearly categorized by geographical region and sector of activity (https://bridge-erasmusproject.eu/platform/index.php). This interactive database will allow stakeholders to react and respond to job offers, internship offers and CVs, knowing they are sensitive to issues and challenges related to social innovation and social engineering. All outputs were produced using a combination of methodologies (literature review, focus groups, interviews) but sharing an emphasis on the participation of the key stakeholders (teachers, students and professionals) in the research process. The project also contributed to create a new network of five European Higher Education Institutions that aim at pursuing their collective work on social innovation, informed by the results of the project and the final event workshops. One concrete output already made possible by the project is a first teaching and student mobility: a Summer school in Salzburg scheduled for June 2025 (https://www.socialeurope.net/summer-school-2025-application). Additional results of this new network are expected, including (joint) scientific publications and Erasmus mobilities for students and teaching staff. During the duration of the project several master and bachelor curricula were launched, revised or assessed in the partner institutions and the processes were informed by the project results. The project also contributed to the production of new knowledge within each partner institution and helped to strengthen ties between Higher Education institutions and professional sectors related to social work and social innovation training. This was achieved through a range of activities, including focus groups, interviews, multiplier events, and other dissemination efforts. It increased the knowledge and visibility of our training programmes. Furthermore, among the concrete outputs, the project delivered numerous dissemination activities. A complete list of the 54 dissemination activities is available here: https://bridge-erasmusproject.eu/gestion/diss.php).