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Church participation in Western countries over the past fifty years has experienced a decrease (Webber, et al. 2010). The engagement of children and especially young people is among the biggest issues of Diocese and parishes (Webber, et al. 2010). A report developed by Youthscape (2016), a Christian youth organisation, highlighted how churches mainly engage with children (ages 5 to 10) than youth (ages 11 to 18). In fact, the latest research invites churches to participate in understanding if ministries are reaching out to non-religious young people and if they are able to listen and address questions of religious young people about their faith (Youthscape, 2022). The Generation to Generation (Gen2) project objective is to improve the engagement of children, youth, and families with the church and develop supportive environments that are responsive to their needs. Primarily, with an innovative training pathway, the Gen2 project seeks to fit in two professional narratives, Ministry and worker (either Youth or Children and Family), the former involving the participants' faith journey, and the latter ensuring their positive development (Clyne, 2015; APPG, 2019). This training pathway seeks to improve the engagement of young people by changing the culture of the Diocese, altering the lens through which we view and hear young people in our churches. The Gen2 project is ongoing and it has been delivered by the Peterborough Dioceses since October 2020 in several areas: Kettering, Towcester, Corby, Higham, Rutland, Peterborough, and Wellingborough. Thisresearch evaluation outlines the experiences of the participants, the volunteers, the mission enablers, and the overall organisation around the Gen2 project using a mixed method approach mainly driven by qualitative data. Quantitative data were provided by the Peterborough Diocese from October 2018 to May 2022 and were collected at sessions implemented by the Gen2 mission enablers and the volunteers. Qualitative data consisted of 36 semi-structured interviews with participants, volunteers, mission enablers and broader organisation members (such as the project lead and the rectors of the benefice) and focused on the needs of programme participants and the programme performance. Overall, the data showed that Gen2 increases the engagement with the Church and that mission enablers are able to respond positively to the participants’ needs. The quantitative data showed that the activities have been increasing over time and that Gen2 is able to achieve some of the innovative goals, including creating more outreaching programme, especially for young people. The qualitative data show that the beneficiaries of the programme felt that their needs were being met and that the programme was responsive to their needs, with each participant expressing positive experiences since they engaged.

Social innovation has seen rapid growth in the last decade globally, with increasing numbers of social innovators developing new ideas, the emergence of government policy to support social innovation, and enhanced interest in the concept and practice by academics. Universities play a key role in developing responses to complex problems and social innovation is seen to offer critical tools for them to achieve this. This research comprises a comparative study and five in-depth country reports on social innovation and social enterprise research and teaching in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and Vietnam. It was conducted by the University of Northampton in partnership with local research teams in each country. It finds that social innovation is the subject of growing number of courses in these countries, with the vast majority of modules focused at the undergraduate level, and social innovation teaching seen as a critical element in students’ development, especially in fostering communication skills, empathy, problem-solving, and analytical thinking. However, it notes that one of the existing challenges is that social innovation modules remain dominated by business schools. Research into social innovation is also growing, and there is a desire for more research centred on business modelling, social enterprise success factors and social impact measurement. However, it notes that research collaborations in this field between Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are uncommon and that there is a lack of funding for social innovation research from HEIs. The authors make a number of recommendations in the comparative study at the practice, institutional and systemic levels. They suggest, for instance, that social innovation should be embedded across all academic disciplines and degree programmes and that HEIs increase their engagement with corporates for support of social innovation research and teaching.

Over the last twenty years, Alternative Food Networks (AFN) have become increasingly successful at reducing the length of the chain that connects food production and consumption in an attempt to counteract the impact of the contradictions of the industrial food system and its supermarket-dominated distribution. Their grassroots actions, aimed at overcoming pre-existing socio-economic structures, are in line with social innovations, which have the objective of promoting the social participation of consumers and producers in food systems (empowerment, socio-political activism or social integration in society). In Italy, the Solidarity Purchasing Groups (SPGs), have been the subject of numerous academic studies, but the scope of these studies has, to date, been limited to the political activism of the consumer. The ability of this experience to foster the social participation of the groups’ suppliers and the effects that the exchange has on the economic life of the producers have not yet been adequately studied. This article addresses this gap by investigating the extent to which SPGs can reduce the economic marginalisation of their suppliers and evaluates if the activities they promote could increase their social participation. Based on quantitative and qualitative data, this study shows that SPGs, in contrast to other AFNs, maintain a clear separation between consumers and producers and this could mitigate the positive impact of these initiatives on their suppliers. Our analysis of the suppliers shows that SPGs can act as a safety net against economic downturns and that the social participation of the producers involved is higher at the macro, meso and individual levels, compared to producers who do not cooperate with the SPGs., The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, Vol. 24 No. 3 (2018): Special Issue: Social Innovation in Agriculture and Food

This is the second interim annual report from a four-year longitudinal study of the social impact resulting from the Ministry of Defence’s expenditure on cadets. The key themes covered by this report relate to Social Mobility and cadets’ attendance, behaviour, and attitude at school. The report includes the views of schools, Ofsted and Cadet Force Adult Volunteers (CFAVs) on the benefits of cadets. In addition, this report comments on findings on the value and contribution of adult volunteers, cadets’ health and wellbeing including special educational needs and disability, and the role which cadets can play in improving community cohesion. The report is based on data gathered from 202 in-depth interviews and 3,753 responses to questionnaires

This report represents the findings of the University of Northampton (UoN) in the context of research engaged in by The Confederation of National Associations of Tanners and Dressers of the European Community (COTANCE) and industriAll-Europe, carried out within the framework of an EU funded Social Dialogue project. The research seeks to explore the practices in reporting and communicating Health and Safety (H&S) risks along the leather value chain and how they are managed in tanneries. Although most responses originated in Europe, the research was also keen to acknowledge that leather is a ‘Global Value Chain’; the research therefore reflects practices that span beyond European borders and the implications from the findings and recommendations made have global resonance for the leather value chain.