The role of social innovation in integration : Development tool for Startup Refugees
Mahamud, Hoda (2025)
2025
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025060219475
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025060219475
Tiivistelmä
The purpose of this thesis is to create a development tool to support the social innovation services provided by Startup Refugees. Startup Refugees is a social innovation organization that supports refugees, migrants and asylum seekers in their resettlement journey on finding employment, skill developments and entrepreneurial opportunities. The development tool is an online survey that emphasizes experience and inclusion. The focus of the thesis is to identify the role of social innovation in the integration of migration, a topic of growing importance as migration continues to increase globally. The rising demands on existing systems have highlighted the need for alternative approaches. Social innovation being a growing concept has shown influence in migration settings through community led innovations to support and complement existing policies. Finding concepts such as social innovation to directly address complex issues, provide in finding sustainable and innovative solutions.
Creating a development tool that is suitable, broad and data-generating is an important progress for the organization. Co-creation is implemented during the design process together with the organization. Co-creation session was held in Start Up Refugees office in Helsinki March 2025. Influence for the online survey is gained from the Experience of Social Inclusion scale survey (2023) developed by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare. Significant impacts to develop the survey were gained from the Methodological framework for measuring social innovation by Hoelscher, Mildenberger, Bund & Gerhard (2015), EU methodological framework for assessing the impact of social innovation (2019) and the Theory of change.
Research oriented development is implemented as a method to carry out the development of the survey as the focus was to improve existing service. The survey was refined multiple times through the influence of co-creation. A short pilot was held for the survey to ensure the practicality of the survey. Two additional questions were added for the pilot, which gained a total of 9 responses. The development of the online survey will be monitored by the organization in future, as the co-creation helped to achieve the desired outcome.
Social innovation has been identified as an effective way to support social inclusion and cohesion, enabling societies to move forward collectively in addressing the complexities of migration.
Creating a development tool that is suitable, broad and data-generating is an important progress for the organization. Co-creation is implemented during the design process together with the organization. Co-creation session was held in Start Up Refugees office in Helsinki March 2025. Influence for the online survey is gained from the Experience of Social Inclusion scale survey (2023) developed by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare. Significant impacts to develop the survey were gained from the Methodological framework for measuring social innovation by Hoelscher, Mildenberger, Bund & Gerhard (2015), EU methodological framework for assessing the impact of social innovation (2019) and the Theory of change.
Research oriented development is implemented as a method to carry out the development of the survey as the focus was to improve existing service. The survey was refined multiple times through the influence of co-creation. A short pilot was held for the survey to ensure the practicality of the survey. Two additional questions were added for the pilot, which gained a total of 9 responses. The development of the online survey will be monitored by the organization in future, as the co-creation helped to achieve the desired outcome.
Social innovation has been identified as an effective way to support social inclusion and cohesion, enabling societies to move forward collectively in addressing the complexities of migration.