Powering a new future

I caught Peter Ramsden, a Commission Expert, as he was leaving and the building was being closed down. He talked about what he took away from this event.

He said that he comes away feeling that although EQUAL has finished, at the same time some of its ideas are living on. The idea of social innovation has taken root. We desperately need to make some of our services work for people

Another feeling he has is that we have to do it ourselves. The next step is to see how people who were passionate in EQUAL can do it systematically, at scale, again and again and again.

I caught two happy-looking people at the end of the conference and got some short reactions from them about the event. They had been presenting the results of years of working together in an EQUAL funded project called Anim@Te.

I asked Graça what she thought of the conference. She was very enthusiastic about the reaction of people to their project. People had applauded their work and there was a great connection of ideas.

Graça then asked Paulo what he was taking away with him.

“It was an important meeting of ideas, sharing of information and a sense of hope that some of these ideas will continue, and an idea that people will incorporate some of these ideas in their work.”