On 21st of November we celebrated International Social Enterprise Day with a day full of inspiration, networking and learning about the Spark Social Enterprise programmes and tools. In the beautiful Halles des Tanneurs in Brussels no fewer than 100 social entrepreneurs, European and local policy makers and representatives of network and support organisations gathered.

The day started off with an inspiring keynote by Heider Ridha, one of the leading advisors on innovation development, social entrepreneurship and education spaces. He shared his views on the role of each stakeholder in the ecosystem of social enterprises.

We continued with an exploration of the Spark outcomes by the project partners and a panel discussion on conditions and actions to support gainful innovation for social enterprises.

In the following breakout sessions and hands-on workshops participants shared knowledge and tools that could help strengthen future social enterprise programmes and policies. The day concluded with reflections and ideas for the future by MEP John Howarth, Karel Vanderpoorten, from DG GROW (European Commission) and George Tsekouras from University of Brighton.

For more information on Spark check: SPARK