From 23-25 May 2007, young leaders from 25 countries met in Tallinn, Estonia, for the fifth event in The Network Effect project series, titled ‘Social Innovation: key to social challenges of the 21st century?’.

European societies are facing many similar challenges from ageing populations to the growth of poverty and poor health linked to modern lifestyles, to name a few. Traditional social policy and the market may not be best equipped to deal with those changing social circumstances, whilst ensuring that Europe is still a good place to live in the years to come.

The Tallinn Network Effect brought together talented participants from diverse professional backgrounds, ranging from advisors to the Chief Justice of Armenia and Prime Minister of Kosovo to young leaders from media, community, academia and business. A key part of the programme was devoted to ‘real-world visits’ to six Estonian and two Finnish organisations. Participants were asked to become innovators for a day and come up with some real solutions to problems which those organisations face in their daily work. No doubt, it is a bit of a challenge to solve such big issues as the AIDS and drugs problem or the lack of civil society in a mere couple of hours. Yet several great ideas were pitched to the jury on the second day. Praise went to the groups which worked on the tasks of making the fight against AIDS trendy and bringing drug addicts back into mainstream society. The main prize went to the education & integration group for their idea of a reality-TV show ‘50/50’ which would integrate young Russians and Estonians. The idea was also picked up by the main Estonian daily newspaper which ran an article on the whole event, so we may still see some real impact in the country.

Read the Network Effect Tallinn report (PDF 46 KB).