Social Friday

• After gaining much experience in building and strengthening local communities in Africa, Better Future initiated a innovative concept focused on communities in The Netherlands. This concept, called ‘Social Friday’, activates local entrepreneurs, organisations and institutions to jointly work on relevant social issues in their community. These issues are brought in by a local case owner, which could be e.g. the municipal council or mayor. During four ‘Social’ Fridays, 12 to 20 local entrepreneurs and professionals will work on the social issue at hand. They will together think of creative solutions that will subsequently be discussed with the parties involved. After this
• brainstorming phase, the invented solution will be tested in practice. This will be done in a central place within the community so that the solution is presented to all the stakeholders (local inhabitants, entrepreneurs, organizations, etc). Finally, this testing will be evaluated and the solution fine-tuned before the project will be handed over to the local case owner and can actually be implemented. ‘Social Friday’ is a unique concept that stimulates unusual and meaningful cooperation between parties on concrete local issues, constructive positive thinking and the strengthening of local communities as a whole. The concept has been successfully tested in Culemborg in 2009.