Embedding Social Innovation in Latin America Academic Curriculum

Abstract

[EN] Recently we have witnessed the growth of social innovation initiative as a viable approach to address many challenges of contemporary societies across the social, cultural, economic, educational and environmental domains. Social innovation stes up to develop alternative, and sustainable solutions to social issues by means of organizational models that rely on strong civic engagement and participation across private and public sectors. As such, social innovation holds a strong potential for the transformation of societies and has attracted a growing interest from researchers, practitioners and policy makers around the world. A key domain of concern is the need for developing adequate models and methodologies for the qualification of indivduals for social innovation. In this vein the Students4Change project aims to develop and implement an integrative methodology to embed social innovation and entrepreneurship in the academic experience of students in Latin America. This paper offers a preliminary description of the advancements led by 10 universities in 5 Latin America countries engaged in the project, in order to develop competences for social innovation and social entrepreneurship through innovations in academic curricula.