World's Leading Social Innovators to Meet in Dublin

Dublin, Ireland will play host to a gathering of about fifty of the world's prominent social innovation leaders next month. The aim for this global meet, called "Change Nation," is to help launch a major plan to tackle serious socio-economic challenges facing Ireland.

The three-day event will try to bring together proven socially innovative solutions and match them with the right talent and financial support. This can help accelerate the process of innovation and social entrepreneurship in areas such as economic development, education, health, environment and civic participation.

Change Nation is being promoted by the organizers as a social innovation platform that will cover about 300 one-on-one meetings between social innovators, philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, and business and political leaders. It will be hosted in Dublin by Ashoka Ireland, in association with the government, business houses and the media. The Irish Times is one of the media partners for the event.

The founder of Change Nation and a director of Ashoka, Paul O'Hara, said that a number of socially innovative solutions to the problems of Ireland are already available in the country and around the world. The real challenge lies in identifying the right solutions and implementing them successfully.

O'Hara said: "The solutions to be discovered at Change Nation have proven themselves to be effective, each one typically impacting on thousands of lives. Systematically importing and accelerating these proven solutions will increase our speed, efficiency and success rate in addressing these challenges."

The Change Nation event will pitch 50 socially innovative solutions to help address a wide range of pressing problems. The organizers are hoping that at least 50 percent of the ideas presented at this event will be implemented in some form over the next one year. O'Hara said: "We hope that people will get involved in the solutions they are passionate about, or choose to create their own. Ireland needs more change-makers and everyone has a role to play."

Source: Irish Times

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