European Network of Innovation for Inclusion (ENII)

Citizens in Power (CIP) is a member organisation of the European Network of Innovation for Inclusion (ENII), a Europe-wide community of social innovation practitioners led by Acción contra el Hambre (Action Against Hunger). Through ENII, CIP connects with over 530 organisations in 35 countries working to transfer, adapt and scale proven solutions for a more inclusive European labour market.

A European community for social innovation in inclusion

Citizens in Power (CIP) has joined the European Network of Innovation for Inclusion (ENII) as a member organisation, extending our engagement in European networks dedicated to social inclusion, employability and civic participation. ENII has been led by Acción contra el Hambre (Action Against Hunger) since 2016, promoting social innovation among key stakeholders in order to contribute to a more inclusive European labour market. In Spain, the initiative operates as a social innovation project under Priority 6, “Innovative Social Actions”, of the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+), within the programme for social inclusion, the Child Guarantee and the fight against poverty, and is co-financed by the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and Agenda 2030.

The Network builds alliances between actors and promotes innovative responses to complex social challenges, combining a European-wide approach with local implementation adapted to each context. It supports the transfer and scaling of successful social innovations across organisations and countries, giving members access to pioneering initiatives, capacity-building tools and practical methodologies that strengthen the impact and sustainability of their work. Today ENII brings together over 530 organisations from 35 countries — associations, NGOs, foundations, social enterprises, cooperatives, public bodies, universities, VET providers and schools — making it one of the most substantial practitioner communities for social innovation in employment and inclusion in Europe. 

Why this collaboration matters

Cyprus faces a familiar cluster of inclusion challenges: young people distanced from the labour market, low-skilled and long-term unemployed adults, women returning to work after care responsibilities, third-country nationals navigating recognition and language barriers, and persons with disabilities or chronic health conditions whose pathways into employment remain fragmented. These challenges are not unique to Cyprus, and neither are the solutions. What is frequently missing is not ambition but transfer capacity — the structured means to identify a method that already works elsewhere, understand the conditions that make it work, adapt it honestly to the local context and test it at a scale that generates evidence.

ENII was designed to close precisely that gap. For CIP, membership provides three things that are difficult to obtain through project-based cooperation alone: continuous access to validated social innovations rather than one-off outputs; a peer community large enough to surface comparable practice across very different welfare and labour market systems; and methodological support for adaptation and scaling, which is typically the weakest stage in the lifecycle of an inclusion intervention.

The Network’s approach

ENII organises its offer around three complementary strands: access to innovative solutions, through practical tools and guidance for implementing proven social innovations; capacity building, through training on social innovations and tools that facilitate the process; and scaling and replication support, helping organisations to adapt and expand innovations for greater social impact. 

Social Innovation Labs. The Labs are recurring collaborative spaces in which social innovations move across the Network. In each Lab, a Spanish organisation transfers a social innovation to two European organisations, while a European organisation transfers an innovation to three Spanish organisations, which replicate, adapt and scale these solutions within their own contexts. Labs are structured into cycles that progress through six steps: identifying shared social challenges across Europe; listening sessions on those challenges; selecting the challenge to be addressed in the cycle; identifying and selecting the social innovations for transfer and scaling; selecting replicant organisations; and adapting, piloting and scaling the transferred innovations. The transfer pathway itself moves through four defined stages — transference, replication, pilot and scaling — with the Network accompanying the scaling process and sharing good practices, while the transferring organisation provides strategic guidance where needed. The 2025–2026 cycle addresses the integration of a health approach within socio-labour inclusion pathways, and a further cycle is being defined for 2026–2027. 

Capacity building. Members can access short training modules, specialised resources, live sessions and peer exchange aimed at strengthening skills in social innovation and scaling, improving project sustainability and applying practical tools to increase social impact. 

The European Forum. The Network’s annual flagship event brings together experts, institutions and practitioners to share evidence, showcase initiatives and connect policy with practice. Thirteen editions have been held to date, with some 950 participants. 

What CIP brings to the Network

CIP joins ENII with a decade of practice in non-formal and adult education, entrepreneurship support, digital and STEAM education, and civic participation, delivered through European cooperation projects and directly with learners in Cyprus. Specifically, we contribute:

• Delivery experience with under-represented groups in Cyprus, including NEETs, low-qualified adults, women entrepreneurs, migrants and refugees, and learners in rural and peripheral communities.
• Entrepreneurship and employability methodologies developed and validated in European projects, including business planning support, mentoring structures and enterprise-readiness training for young people and adults.
• Digital and STEAM pedagogies, including gamified and technology-enhanced learning approaches suitable for adaptation to inclusion contexts.
• Validation and recognition capacity, including the issuance of digital credentials aligned with the Council Recommendation of 16 June 2022 on a European approach to micro-credentials for lifelong learning and employability — a practical asset for any transferred innovation that needs to make learning outcomes visible and portable.
• Dissemination and stakeholder reach through our own channels and our cooperation with public authorities, education providers and civil society in Cyprus, together with our affiliated organisations RITE (Research Institute for Technological Evolution) and the Center for Sustainability (C4S).
• A small-country perspective on adaptation. Innovations designed for large urban systems must often be re-engineered for contexts with limited institutional density and small beneficiary cohorts. Cyprus offers a demanding but instructive test bed, and the lessons travel to other small member states and island regions.

How CIP will engage

Our participation is intended to be operational rather than nominal. Over the coming cycles CIP will:

1. Take part in the identification of shared challenges and in listening sessions, ensuring that the Cypriot and Eastern Mediterranean dimension of inclusion challenges is represented in the Network’s agenda-setting.
2. Apply as a replicant organisation in Social Innovation Labs where the innovation under transfer matches our target groups and delivery capacity, with a view to piloting in Cyprus and documenting adaptation requirements transparently.
3. Offer our own validated practices for transfer, so that methods developed in Cyprus through European cooperation projects can be tested by peer organisations elsewhere.
4. Use the Network’s capacity-building offer to strengthen our staff’s competences in social innovation design, adaptation and scaling, and to improve the sustainability planning of our own inclusion interventions.
5. Participate in the European Forum and contribute to Network communication channels, sharing evidence from Cyprus and connecting Network members with Cypriot stakeholders.
6. Build consortia for Erasmus+, CERV, AMIF, ESF+ and Horizon Europe actions with Network members whose priorities align with ours, so that Lab findings can be taken forward at project scale.

Policy alignment

This collaboration supports the objectives of the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan and its 2030 headline targets: at least 78% of the population aged 20–64 in employment, at least 60% of all adults participating in training every year, and a reduction of at least 15 million in the number of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion, including at least five million children. It also connects to the European Child Guarantee and to the inclusion and diversity priority that runs across Erasmus+ and the European Social Fund Plus. For CIP, ENII membership is a mechanism for translating these commitments into tested practice at local level, and for ensuring that what we deliver in Cyprus is informed by evidence generated across the Union.