This year again during the Avignon Festival, UFISC is offering several highlights, meetings, workshops and training sessions on July 11, 15 and 17 in the ISTS room, as part of the Maison des professionnels du Spectacle Vivant and the Village des professionnels du OFF, including a special event organized in conjunction with the Collectif pour démarche de progrès par les droits culturels and Opale CRDLA-Culture.
Solidarity Oxford is a website and digital map which has been produced as part of the Solidarity Economy Association’s Mapping the Solidarity Economy in Oxford pilot project.
Oxford has a whole host of organisations, projects and people working to create a just and sustainable city. From swap shops and childcare circles to housing co-ops and community farms, we’ve got a thriving network of initiatives meeting the needs of our communities in ways that put people, and our environment, first.
Around the world, activity like this is known as the solidarity economy. In many cities and countries – from New York City to Barcelona, and from Mali to Brazil – solidarity economy initiatives play a fundamental role in people’s lives.
In New York City, a group of people came together to create a map of their solidarity economy, and this map has helped to make their city’s communities more onnected, their projects and initiatives stronger, and has helped more people to be able to access the products and services they need in ethical and sustainable ways.
We’ve been exploring whether creating a map in Oxford is similarly helpful for our communities.
A big part of SEA’s mission is to make the solidarity economy in the UK stronger, and to encourage more people to find out about it and support in their local area. Our Mapping the Solidarity Economy in Oxford pilot project is about celebrating what’s important in our city’s communities, and showing how all the different projects, initiatives and organisations are helping to create a more just and sustainable world.
Together, we are creating an alternative economy based on cooperation and self-determination, which empowers everyone, regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender or background, and which cares about the health and well-being of people and the planet.
Our longer-term vision is also to show how the solidarity economy that exists in communities, cities and regions in the United Kingdom is part of a much larger movement of people around the world, all working to transform our economic system into a system that works for all.
Download our Pilot Project Report
More info here
From 24 to 26 June 2019, RIPESS was in Geneva (Switzerland) to attend this important international conference where participants discussed the results and role of the Social Solidarity Economy (SSE) in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
How can the Social Solidarity Economy (SSE) contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDOs)? Can local SSE projects have an impact on global development? The answers to these and many other questions were discussed at the International Conference RIPESS members presented several papers and organized the parallel session “Building the SSE movement from local to global”.
It was an opportunity to explain the alternative development model advocated by RIPESS, as well as the process of global convergence that is currently being promoted with the World Social Forum of Transformative Economies 2020.
And then we had two presentations from RIPESS members. First, Yvon Poirier of RIPESS North America presented the case study “Association for Sarva Seva Farms – ASSEFA-India: 50 Years of Sustainable Development”. You can consult the complete document here
Then, Denison Jayasooria, President of ASEC – RIPESS Asia, presented “Community Forestry Projects in Malaysia: People’s Participation in the Implementation of the ISF”. The full document is available here
The second day began with a presentation by Judith Hitchman, President of Urgenci, Community Supported Agriculture around the world and member of the RIPESS Board of Directors, entitled “How Community Supported Agriculture contributes to the realisation of Solidarity Economy in the SDGs”. It showed the deep ramifications that are possible in the specific sector of agriculture supported by the community and SWM. The full text of the article can be found here.
In the closing session, RIPESS members Judith, Denison and Laura Cicciarelli highlighted the main messages of the past two days with the OECD and the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD).
Overall, the evaluation made at the closing session was that, throughout the two-day conference, the contribution of SSE to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals was highlighted in the case studies presented.
For the future, it was agreed that the UNTFSSE, to which RIPESS actively contributes, should transmit messages from the field and prepare to work on a UN resolution on #ESS.
You can find the videos of the various sessions #SSE4SDGS on the Facebook page of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD).
Since April 2019, DOCK along with 16 other SSE entities in Greece are functioning as official support centers for SSE, an action funded by the Greek government and the EU.
The main objective of this action is to provide free services to people or entities who want to develop economic activity in the field of SSE either by giving general info and introductory documentation to those interested or through support and personalized counseling for organizations already economically active in SSE.
Having already supported ten of these SSE initiatives and groups of people at the stage of the initial idea, the aim during the implementation of this action is to contribute in making SSE more visible by strengthening and enhancing the SSE practices and the actors behind them.
On the 10th of May 2019, in collaboration with Bostani (a producers-consumers community which functions under the scope of sustainable and responsible production & consumption) and in the framework of our participation in the European elections « Fair Times Campaign », the Greek RIPESS Europe member DOCK organized the «Trade Fair, Live Fair» event in Athens, a public discussion about the vision of Europe, of economic justice and environmental sustainability.
The guest speakers, Francesca Guibilo for WFTO (World Fair Trade Organisation) and Marketa Vinkelhoferova from Fair&Bio coop / Ripess EU (Czech Republic) offered their view through their important experience in these fields. Francesca presented the history of Fair Trade and informed about the strategy of WFTO in building alliances and networks in Europe and worldwide, while Marketa gave some examples and illustrated practices under which the connection of Fair Trade and SSE is becoming more and more present.
They focused on understanding better the history and the progress of the Fair Trade movement concerning the development of networks in different practices worldwide, but also on how public policies about sustainable production and consumption are being implemented in the current context and how they should change in the future in Europe.
This year’s conference of CIRIEC took place in Bucharest, Romania from the 6th-9th June 2019 with an ambitious title : « Moving towards a new Economic system ». CIRIEC (International Centre of Research and Information on the Public, Social and Cooperative Economy) is a network of international scientific and research organizations, set up in 1947.
Dražen Šimleša, our network coordinator, represented RIPESS Europe in several sessions as well as in the International Scientific Commission “Social and Cooperative Economy” of CIRIEC and participated in the meeting that took place before the official opening of the conference.
It was a special occasion since for the first time the conference was organised in Central Eastern Europe, a region of the continent which has its own historical challenges and opportunities for SSE, given the fact that Social and Solidarity Economy brings in a new paradigm of governance founded on democracy and participation.
The participants discussed about the role of SSE and the current global challenges, with a ‘transformational vision’, focusing on themes such as workers owned enterprises and the future of decent work, providing food sustainability, sovereignty and access , SSE eco-systems-governance, networks, visibility and policies. Thus, a good place for RIPESS to be among other 250 participants from all over the world.
Hopefully this will bring closer practitioners and social movements activists for SSE with scientific sector that can support us with their researches and analyses.
See the programme and some contributions here.
by Jean Rossiaud & Antonin Calderon (Léman Currency/ APRES-GE)
In this fourth chapter of the series that we started in October, on the theme of “local currencies”, after an overview of the advantages and challenges of local currencies through the example of the Léman (October 2018), the possibilities for collaboration and synergies between local currencies and local contract agriculture (LCA) (December 2018), and the interest of local currencies as tools for the development of economic agricultural sectors (February 2019), we are now proposing no longer to start from sectors, but from territories (neighborhoods, villages, etc.) to build short-circuits and collectively be part of the transition.
The climate crisis brings us back to common sense by making us aware that it is ecologically, economically and socially absurd to consume, in Geneva or Paris, tomatoes harvested in Holland, canned in Romania and whose cans themselves have been produced in Southeast Asia. The free movement of goods, particularly in the agricultural sector, has led to the economic specialization of entire regions and increased dependence on traders and large distributors. The competition between all the world’s territories produces great economic and social vulnerability everywhere locally; it is neither ecologically sustainable nor economically sustainable. That is why we come back to “short food supply chains”.
It is common to refer to ” short food supply chains ” as distribution channels, most often agricultural, where only one intermediary operates between the producer and the consumer, whether through direct sales (see our article on Local Agriculture,December 2018 , ) or indirect sales.
Today, there is a growing demand for ” short food supply chains “, because as consum’actors we want to protect our health and our environment at the same time. But historically, short circuits were the rule, especially just outside the city walls, as in Geneva on the Plain of Plainpalais or in Paris for market gardening villages to supply halls and urban markets.
However, the idea of ” short food supply chains “, in its contemporary renaissance, refers to the representation of ” Small is Beautiful ” (by the British economist Ernst Friedrich Schumacher) and of Territorial self-organization, as Hans Widmer (P. M.) imagines it, where ” neighborhood” are both economic and social living areas ” at human level ” and political spaces for governance in the communes.
Read more
(TAPAS – There Are Platforms as Alternatives) is a research program financed by the French Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Solidarities and Health, led jointly by the CEPN (Centre d’économie et de gestion de l’Université Paris 13 – UMR CNRS 7234) and the association, Coop des Communs.
Created in 2016, La Coop des Communs comprises commons and SSE practitioners, as well as researchers and public actors. Its goal is to help build an ecosystem conducive to the emergence of commons. “Allies, Commons and ESS can constitute, not residual solutions, but real pillars for sustainable development in a pluralist vision of the economy” (La Coop des Communs, 2018). La Coop des Communs is organised into work groups, including the Plateformes en Communs (Platforms in Commons) group. This took shape around digital platforms open to sharing practices in order to “bring together a set of emerging or existing actors who share these values, within an open community” and “build a mutualised toolbox aimed at operationality, and enable the appropriation of the new peer-to-peer possibilities offered by digital technology”(La Coop des Communs, 2017). The group’s objective is to create, run and equip the platform community in line with a code of ethics based on five principles: inclusive governance, equitable sharing of value, data ethics, production of commons, and cooperation among members. By cross-comparing several sampling criteria (including diversity of the development levels of the platform’s activity and the sectors of activity), the team selected nine sharing platforms.
The project is based on the empirical study of nine SSE platforms, analysing substantive, social solidarity economy mechanisms they develop. The results will propose a typology of collaborative platforms according to the economic models on which they are based and modes of treatment of the contributors to the functioning of the platform they propose. Emphasis will be placed on the combination of these two dimensions as well as on socioeconomic solutions and innovations to overcome the obstacles encountered by the actors. Description of the project is in French but the results will be available in English as well.
See more (Fr) : https://cepn.univ-paris13.fr/tapas/
The Economy and Management of the Commons Master degree has just opened in Paris 13, dedicated to the political economy of the commons, offering adjusted alternative management training. Fostering a democratic economy, the social solidarity economy is a crucial ally to the development of the commons. Their combination calls for dedicated and appropriate training: this Master is a first step. Commons call for an appropriate governance implementing a bundle of rights that will enable a diversity of stakeholders to take part to the commons; organizational forms and work organisation are to be tailored to the democratic aspiration of commoners. Those different aspects are breaking up with the extreme private property regime of appropriation, self-regulated market competition, and the hierarchical management.
Paris 13 and the CEPN Lab in particular have been dedicated to foster the commons development, actively cooperating with commons initiatives, networks of SSE & commons, alternative digital platforms, etc., through research programs.
By Laura Aufrère
The RDW conference in 2017 explored some of the key dimensions which have impacted the world of work. The 2019 RDW conference will continue to focus on the future of work, to advance our understanding of what innovative institutions and transformative policies could help in ensuring a more equitable and just society. In their papers, contributors are invited to propose new ideas and policies that could help the global community in shaping a better future of work with a focus on: (i) transitions and transformations in the world of work; (ii) rethinking capitalism; (iii) well-being in the world of work; and (iv) building and renewing institutions: a social contract for the 21st century. This conference will contribute to the global debates during the International Labour Office (ILO)’s 100th anniversary in 2019.
Members of RIPESS Europe will participate to this conference, sharing analysis regarding the major contribution of SSE to the future of decent work, facing the environmental-capitalocene crisis, and the challenge of building solidarity between generations (some parts or the world becoming structurally older, some younger).
Following RIPESS Europe contribution for the open call regarding the development of the European Social Pillar of Social Rights, some element that will be communicated during that conference will be published in the next RIPESS Europe newsletter.
Link: www.ilo.org/rdw2019
