Mediterranean Forest Week: Social Innovation in Forests
Forests are natural resources — both public and private – which are host to a varied array of cases of social innovation that contribute to community and village development in a sustainable and stable way.
At the 6th Mediterranean Forest Week, which will be held in Lebanon from 1-5 April, the Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas (SIMRA) Project will lead a side event about Social Innovation.
The workshop will explore the Mediterranean region as an incubating model for social innovation through innovation cases in the Mediterranean that demonstrate elements for success and best practices for replication and learning purposes. The presentation will introduce a special, hands-on practice booklet for establishing social innovation cases, and indicators for assessing social innovation cases.
These key success cases from the SIMRA project will highlight the indicators for evaluating and understanding the findings of innovation cases, thereby elevating participants’ understanding of social innovation in a forest context and in a Mediterranean context.
Presenters will include Lebanese Human Rights Activist, Researcher, Environmentalist, and Journalist Bassam Kantar; University of Padova’s Ricardo Da Re; social entrepreneur Joachim Englert of Social Forest; and European Forest Institute Mediterranean Facility’s (EFIMED) Valentino Marini Govigli, with expert moderation from Leader of the Mediterranean and Near East Forest Communicators Network and Development programs manager for SEEDS-int, Patricia R. Sfeir.
