I-Danha: Social Innovation Incubator

Ruris was at the origin of the "I-Danha - Social Innovation Incubator" project, supported by the Partnerships for Impact Programme - Portugal Inovação Social, which set out to contribute to the development of a social entrepreneurship ecosystem that would encourage the emergence of ideas and the delivery of social innovation projects in the Beira Baixa region.

Creating this specialist incubator made it possible to attract new entrepreneurs and talent to the area. The intention was for it to serve as a living lab (testing and trialling) for prototypes of products and services designed to address the social problems already identified, and which could be turned into tradeable goods and services with global application, that is, capable of being scaled and replicated.

This initiative therefore set out to contribute to the development of an ecosystem of social entrepreneurship and innovation that would do much to improve people's living conditions, particularly in rural areas, and to strengthen social and territorial cohesion.

The actions carried out were:

• Preparation and submission of the I-Danha project application to the Partnerships for Impact Programme – Portugal Inovação Social;
• Support for the implementation of a social entrepreneurship project supported by Portugal Inovação Social;
• Creation and capacity building of a regional network of social activators;
• Creation of a panel of experts for each area of work (health, environment and culture) to appraise the projects;
• Creation of a network of social investors;
• An ideas competition for social innovation projects;
• Development of the intensive project acceleration programme for the entrepreneurs selected with the best ideas;
• Running of a Demo Day with social investors to attract investment for the projects.