To participate in the webinar, please register here: 
https://tu-dortmund.zoom.us/meeting/register/JTw1U_3NSFSNk1HMVuND1A#/registration

The next ESSI webinar on 3rd June 2025 explores a range of social innovations in the context of European welfare states responding to the challenges of demographic change, globalisation, rural development and regional inequality, and ensuring mental health at work. SIs in this context do not just fill gaps in social service delivery or the functioning of the labour market. They contribute to reconfiguring the domains of the state, the market, civil societies and families (Jenson 2015) in the light of local and particular challenges that tend to accumulate for (often intersectionally) disadvantaged groups.  Doing this, they engage with the welfare state in varied ways: our cases of rural-related initiatives represent a continuum from recombining challenges and (new) resources to exploring ways to redress the inequalities or exclusions generated by contemporary social policies themselves.

The webinar presents and compares three case studies from the Horizon Europe project WeLaR to explore possible pathways of social innovation in the welfare state.

Agenda (14.00-16.00 CEST):

1. Welcome and introduction (Tony Schröder, Ursula Holtgrewe)

2. Social innovations in/with/for the welfare state in rural areas (Ursula Holtgrewe, ZSI)

3. Care Farms to treat burnout in Belgium (Laurène Thil, Karo Lenaerts, Mikkel Barslund, HIVA/KU Leuven)

4. An Octopus to support women in rural Serbia: the Hobotnica project (Sonja Avlijaš, EKOF)

5. The quest to regularise live-in care work in Austria (Ursula Holtgrewe, Stella Wolter, ZSI)
Comments by discussant (TBA)

6. Q&A

7. Wrap-up