Learning for Change: Social Innovations and Youth Empowerment - Insights on how to engage new genera

This panel session brought together the expertise of practitioners and researchers to investigate what social innovations can do to empower young people, especially those who are at risk of marginalization because of unemployability or difficulties in obtaining bank credit. The importance of building trust and engaging in meaningful activities within youth-oriented initiatives has been emphasized through case-studies of the European Credit Unions movement (creditunionnetwork.eu), Fiare Banca Etica (ethic bank in Spain, fiarebancaetica.coop), Timebank Hull and East Riding (time bank in UK, timebankhullandeastriding.co.uk) and YouSEE (social platform in Western Balkan, youseefor.me).

The concept of empowerment goes hand in hand with independence. The common goal of these initiatives is to enable young people to build autonomous projects in life. The challenges of building an alternative local economy from the bottom up are many and not only limited to ensure commitment of young people: overlaps with the welfare system and relations with regulatory authorities are often troublesome. While time-credits benefits to volunteers run in parallel with traditional source of income, Fiare Banca Etica has had endless regulatory barriers before being able to settle as a branch of the Italian, well-established Banca Popolare Etica (bancaetica.it).

Besides those issues, it is hardly debatable that these kind of innovations, at least in their early life, rely on subsidies. A strong dependence on government funding is a weakness when the financial and political system shows resistance to not-for-profit projects. Initiatives promoting inclusiveness, solidarity and collaboration are unquestionably valuable because of their ability to network and their social impact on communities, but the integration of traditional and developing ways to support local communities is still an ongoing process.