Earlier today, the Euro-Mediterranean University (EMUNI) held a pre-workshop planning meeting with new collaborators for its third workshop on the blue economy within the framework of the Horizon Europe social innovation project Change Hubs for Ecosystemic Social Solutions (CHESS).
Project Coordinator, Sophie Burton, and Diana Rico, Junior Researcher, chaired the meeting at Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale – OGS in Trieste (Italy), accompanied by the Director of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on Sustainable Blue Economy (Coe-Sube) at EMUNI and of International Cooperation and Research Promotion at OGS, Dr. Mounir Ghribi. In attendance, were Francesca Marchi of the Area Science Park in Padriciano (Italy), and Dr. Simona Kustec, Leon Pavlič & Hristina Stojanovikj of the Centre for Development and Knowledge Transfer of the University of Primorska (Slovenia) within the framework of the ́Enterprise Europe Network ́project.
It is foreseen that the third CHESS workshop will take place in October this year, once again on freshwater consumption, but across the whole region, encompassing the Slovene coastline, Croatian Istria and Friuli Venezia Giulia in Italy.
The aim of the CHESS project is to design, implement, and test a Social Innovation (SI) in Action Manual in four pilot countries, of which Slovenia is one. The outcomes of this workshop and those of two further workshops within the next year will contribute to the content of the SI Manual, along with data from three other pilot countries involved in the Project: Italy: (youth & female unemployment), Lithuania (migrants & refugees), and Greece (climate). CHESS intends to test and improve existing SI methods and instruments that aim to enhance the collaboration between diverse innovation actors. Social innovation refers to the design and implementation of new solutions that imply conceptual, process, product, or organisational change, which ultimately aim to improve the welfare and wellbeing of individuals and communities.
