Making Waves

Making Waves

5

A Caribbean Social Innovation Guide

Foreword

Across the Caribbean, people and organisations are finding new ways to respond to the challenges that shape their communities. Social innovators are restoring ecosystems, creating jobs, improving education, supporting vulnerable communities, preserving culture, and reimagining how we live, work and care for one another. Community leaders, entrepreneurs, civil society organisations, public institutions, academia, and the private sector are each contributing ideas, resources, knowledge, and partnerships. Social innovation builds on something the Caribbean has always known: creativity, resilience, and collaboration are how small societies solve big problems. It is what turns local ideas into practical solutions that expand opportunity, strengthen communities, and create lasting impact. Making Waves: A Caribbean Social Innovation Guide was developed by the Caribbean Export Development Agency under the EU-LAC Social Accelerator to make this growing body of knowledge more visible, accessible, and useful. For too long, that knowledge has been scattered or worse yet, missing. Social innovators across the region often work in isolation, with limited insight into who is doing what, what support is available, and how to connect. Drawing on research, ecosystem mapping, and strategic roadmap work across Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago, this Guide brings together, in a single bilingual resource, regional insights, country-level perspectives, a practical step-by-step pathway for innovators, and a directory of organisations and support for those seeking to understand, support, or advance social innovation in the Caribbean.

This publication is not only a record of what exists. It is an invitation to connect, collaborate, and act. The research behind it tells a clear story: the region does not lack ideas or talent. What too many innovators lack is an enabling environment, from legal frameworks that recognise enterprises that are both purpose-driven and income-generating, to financing that covers the real cost of running an organisation, to support that reaches women, young people, and communities beyond the main urban centres. Closing that gap is a shared task. Social innovation can emerge from many places: a community group responding to a local need, a young entrepreneur testing a new idea, a business opening opportunities for inclusion, a university generating evidence, or a public institution creating the conditions for change. Each has a role to play. Through the EU-LAC Social Accelerator, and with the support of the European Union under the Global Gateway Investment Agenda, Caribbean Export along the other implementing partners of this programme is proud to contribute to more inclusive, resilient, and connected social innovation ecosystems across the region. We see this work as central to our mission: an economy that grows by including more of its people is a stronger and more competitive economy. We hope this Guide supports those already doing the work, inspires new innovators to begin, and helps build the partnerships needed to turn today’s ripples into waves of lasting change across our Caribbean.

Leo Naut Deputy Executive Director Caribbean Export Development Agency