“Social entrepreneurship training for the demographic challenge” is a practical programme aimed at social entrepreneurs from Bizkaia and professionals from social entities, associations, non-profit organisations, and social initiative cooperatives who have a project, an idea, or a specific concern to improve the lives of older people or contribute to building a society characterised by longevity in Bizkaia.

Promoted by the Directorate-General for Longevity and the Demographic Challenge of the Bizkaia Provincial Council, the training is coordinated by Plataforma50 Hacking Longevity, with the participation of EIDE (Basque Design Association) in the design and co-creation sessions and of Sinnple in sessions on impact measurement.

Practical training to promote ideas about longevity

Over six Fridays at NIC headquarters in Urduliz, each participant or team will work on their own initiative to transform it into a concrete and viable solution. More than 20 of the 30 hours of training will be dedicated to working on the projects themselves.

The programme is based on real data from Bizkaia and incorporates tools for design, co-creation, planning, and impact measurement. Participants will also be able to test their prototypes directly with older people, incorporating their needs and experiences into the development of the solutions.

At the end of the training, each project will have a tested prototype, an implementation plan, an impact measurement proposal, and a project notebook, in addition to a certificate of participation issued by NIC. The goal is for the initiatives to be ready to move towards implementation in 2027.

Participation may be individual or in teams of a maximum of two people from the same entity or project. Places are limited and the selection process will seek a balance between different areas —care, health, loneliness, housing, urban planning, tourism, leisure, training, employability, and technology, among others— and between entities and emerging projects.

A teaching team with experience in longevity, design, and social impact

The training, which will take place over six sessions from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at NIC (Urduliz), will have a teaching team with experience in longevity, innovation, strategy, service design, and impact measurement. The programme will be coordinated by Alberto Bokos Zarraga and Guillermo Irígoras of Plataforma50 Hacking Longevity, who specialise in longevity and the silver economy and have extensive experience in innovation, strategy, and project development.

They will be joined by Lander Balza of EIDE (Basque Design Association), who will participate in the design and co-creation sessions by contributing his experience in strategy and service design, as well as Fabiola Fares of Sinnple, specialising in project management, evaluation, social research, and impact measurement and management. This multidisciplinary team will support participants from the definition and testing of their initiatives through to planning their implementation and measuring their results.

Programme

You can access the programme via the following link.