SIforREF addresses at least two main territorial challenges identified in the cooporation  Programme: globalisation, economic development and social cohesion. Refugee and migration issues in fact Impacts the economic equilibrium and  the social cohesion of our society. The refugee crisis of 2015 inevitably gave more evidence to strengths and weaknesses related to the challenges mentioned. Certain best practices revealed the existence of connected top-down and bottom up experiences, which contained  participatory Elements. However,  at the same time the crisis drammatically revealed weaknesses that can be contributed to a lack of skills and services as well as to the hostile socio-political climate.

The project will develop tools for evaluating and designing social innovative practices and for improving the social innovation capacity of policies. It will also implement seven pilot actions to test these tools and design regional and transnational strategies. To do so, the partnership will investigate and build on best practices and initiate a mutual learning process among central European regions, especially neighbourhood regions involved in the project.