Convener: Berenice Dondeyne (ADEPES), Laure Aufrere (UFISC)

Initiatives that develop solidarity economy build their activities so that they contribute to the Commons. These organisations reflect on the impact their activities will have from local to global level? Increasingly, they also want to evaluate their social objectives. This is why they are initiating new, democratic ways of analysing and measuring the impacts; this is known as social audits.

What can we observe in solidarity initiatives? The ability to resist, resilience and innovation that aims to achieve human progress, inventiveness and the rediscovery of ways of doing things that encourage collective entrepreneurship. We can also observe the objective of territorial development and cooperation that run against the usual competitive logic. Many of these initiatives are in the economic field, but their scope is far broader, as they include the shared social impacts that lie at the heart of the activities in question.

How can we express these ways of doing things, and how can we translate the things that in solidarity economy activities always enable us to bear in mind that they should always be people-centered?

Social audit methods created by actors and solidarity enterprises aim to gain a better understanding of the impacts of solidarity activities by committing to a process to improve practice, and an on-going democratic appropriation of the social ends involved.

We wish to jointly discuss and examine the specificities that lie at the heart of our economic initiatives as well as the way in which governance is considered by the internal and external stakeholders, and to see how responsible practice can be implemented at territorial level.

CAPITALISATION, ADVOCACY, ACTION

The objective is to work towards the recognition of solidarity economy at European level – and to assert it in a positive way, with all the hope it represents. We shall also consider the economic criteria – something that is obviously necessary – but that that should not be linked only to the “financialised” view of SSE organisations.

We propose to share our practice and way of doing things and begin work on sharing, to express our values and solidarity know-how. We wish to

  • Create a space within RIPEES EUROPE for the exchange of solidarity practice

  • Develop a collective voice to defend them

  • And build a shared project for the 2017 – 2020 period.