Skandia's Ideas for life foundation
Ideas for Life is a foundation founded by Skandia in 1987 that works for the future.
We want to contribute to a society with better health and increased security for children and young people. We support preventive projects all over Sweden, work actively to develop methods and tools that make a difference for many, and identify preventive measures through research.
Skandia's Ideas for Life foundation
What we do
We strives to create a society with better health and increased security. Ideas for Life acts as a catalyst for creating more and more effective preventive measures for children and young people. This is done by initiating and supporting projects, methods and research.
The foundation has supported more than 4,500 non-profit projects for children and young people, developed methods and tools that can benefit many people, and contributed to research on calculating and making visible the value of social initiatives. Ideas for Life works preventively in the areas of Projects, Methods and Research. Together, the areas create a circular cycle that makes it possible to constantly refine the quality and effectiveness of the interventions.
More about Ideas for life
Ideas for Life collaborates with several Swedish universities to develop evidence-based models for preventive interventions and estimate their economic value. We work closely with non-profit organisations whose preventive activities help to promote the development of children and young people. Partners include Motivationslyftet, Nattvandring.nu and Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia’s Foundation..
The Ideas for life model
The Ideas for Life model was developed together with scientists at Uppsala and Umeå Universities. It is a unique tool for evaluating the effect of social initiatives. The model can be used by municipalities, non-profit organisations and businesses for calculations and decision support data for preventive social initiatives and social investments.
The evidence-based part of the calculation tool includes programs focused on support measures for children and young people, such as social emotional learning, school programmes, programmes for the management of anxiety and depression, parental support programmes and suicide prevention methods.
In another part of the tool, municipalities can make calculations on interventions and programmes that lack evidence and updated data and statistics are necessary for the calculation. This is to prevent risk factors that lead to mental illness, substance abuse, unemployment and more.
Social Return on Investment (SROI) In order to follow-up and evaluate initiatives, we use the method Social Return On Investment (SROI), an internationally established concept for planning, measuring, following up and evaluating the value that initiatives and activities con-tribute socially, environmentally and economically.
What is the Ideas for Life model?
The model is a tool for measuring the quality and efficiency of preventive social initiatives (e.g., preventing illness) aimed at making appropriate preventive interventions at an early stage easier.
The model provides municipalities, businesses and nonprofit organisations with data for planning, controlling and evaluating the operation’s social initiatives. In this way, the Ideas for Life foundation helps provides research, method development and educational initiatives with innovative capabilities in Swedish welfare systems. The Ideas for Life model is unique in its method of measuring and evaluating social innovation and initiatives.
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