The REAS – Red de Redes de Economía Alternativa y Solidaria has a renewed web portal on Solidarity Economy, in a veta release. You can visit it at the usual address economiasolidaria.org.
The Portal has been realised thanks to a crowdfunding campaign (with Goteo.org) and has many new sections and contents.
The entity FIARE and the REAS signed a collaboration agreement during an act integrated to the annual assembly of the solidarity economy network. Read more
REAS network of networks of alternative and solidarity economy is an associative network of confederal character grouping 14 territorial organizations and 4 sectors of social solidarity economy in Spain. As could not be otherwise, it is a horizontal, plural space and a coexistence of different sensitivities and identities, both national and socio-political.
However, and through the vindication of the transformative role of solidarity economy, we share, among others, the values that have to do with the fraternity between people and among peoples, solidarity with those who suffer any onslaught from the powers (whether capitalist, anti-democratic or patriarchal) and the defense of the right to self-management and democratic participation of individuals, enterprises and organizations, communities and peoples.
This is why we can not dismiss the serious events in Catalonia without showing a message of solidarity with its people and, in particular, of fraternity with the individuals, enterprises and organizations that make up the rich movement of the social economy solidarity, committed to democracy and individual and collective freedoms.
The end of the crowdfunding campaign to finance the new solidarity economy web pltaform www.economiasolidaria.org couldn’t have been best !: we have reached the maximum! We are happy to have succeeded in reaching our objective.
We knew that it wouldn’t be easy but we have demostrated that solidarity economy is a consolidated reality and that it is supported by a community capable of answering the challenges. Thus we would like to thank from the bottom of our heart all the people and organizations that have contrinuted and have made this project possible.
We will have soon a powerful platform that will allow us to make visible all the alternatives and experiences that are working for a fairer economy.
Article from Portal de Economia Solidaria (April 7, 2017)
Over the last ten years, the social and solidarity economy has been consolidated as a strong and stable alternative. Now, it generates 10% of the Spanish State’s GDP and provides 2.2 million jobs to people. Its challenge to put people at the centre of the economy is translated into the generation of 190 000 jobs over the last years, whose 80% are contracts for an indefinite period.
The solidarity economy, concretly, has interupted in strategique sectors such as energy, bank and telecommunication and it awakes the interest of more and more people. REAS, Red de Redes de Economía Alternativa y Solidaria, is a federation which is formed by more than 500 entities and companies, generating 379 million of euros of anual incomes and relies on the participation of more than 38 000 of people, whose 8 500 with contract.
To struggle with new challenges, it is missing a powerful tool. To do it, the people in charge of REAS have been starting a redisign of the website www.economiasolidaria.org in order to have more political and social advocacy. This space was born in 1997 to visibilize the networks and social mouvements in favour of a fair, ecological, social and solidarity economy.
The web receives more than 650 000 visits by year and it hosts more than 10 000 contents and more than 28 000 people and organisations are suscribed to its monthly newsletter. The objective is to consolidate it as the thematic web most important in the Spanish State and in the Spanish-speaking countries. The new website will change the structure and the design to respond to the new challenges, that the social mouvement of solidarity economy has to face.
The philosophy of solidarity economy is taken up in the Charter of Principles of Solidarity Economy and summarizes in six important principles : equity, work, environmental sustainbility, cooperation, non-profit and compromise with the immediate environment.
The participatory fundrising campaign takes place through the Goteo platform and will be active from the 27th of February to the 7th of April at this address : https://www.goteo.org/project/nuevo-portal-web-de-la-economia-solidaria
The REAS Spanish solidarity economy network congress takes place every two years. This year it was held in Bilbao, capital of the Spanish Basque country. The theme was “Transformar los territorios desde la Economía Solidaria”: Transforming territories through solidarity economy. It was attended by about 400 people from all over Spain.
The Spanish Basque country is possibly the most advanced region I know in terms of the duality of solidarity economy and food sovereignty. It is indeed one of the original birthplaces of food sovereignty, as Ehne Biskaya was one of the founding members of the food sovereignty movement in the late 1990s. So the fact that transition and food sovereignty was one of the main strands of the congress was no surprise.
Through different dissemination activities of the Spanish solidarity economy network (REAS), a campaign to facilitate the inclusion of social clauses in the processes of public procurement was started, to stimulate institutions to purchase based on ethical, ecological and transparency criteria and extend the knowledge of these tools of social justice, equity and sharing throughout the social solidarity economy and society in general.
The campaign claims the use of public procurement as a useful way to work in depth on social core values such as cohesion and social inclusion, local and sustainable development and efficiency, fairness and transparency in public spending. In this sense, the “Guide to the public socially responsible procurement” published by REAS Euskadi underlines how “it is illogical to transfer the public budgets to companies that pollute, do not respect the rights of the workers, who practice gender discrimination and do not meet the criterion of 2% of disabled persons required by the legislation”.
Adapting the legislation of the Spanish State purchasing and public procurement requires a definition of the legal framework and the ethical criteria affecting 17% of GDP (18 million euro according to 2015 data). Social and solidarity economy networks, environmental organizations and social movements have multiplied the criticism about the slowness with which the required minimums are translated at the level of our administrations. Indeed, the European directives published in 2014 and which should have been adopted at latest in April 2016 have not yet been incorporated in the legal system of the Spanish State.
Read the rest of the article (in Spanish) here.
RIPESS Europe was invited by Podemos to intervene in a workshop on “social and solidarity economy as an alternative to democratize the production of goods and services”. This event echoed previous initiatives of the “left Front” in Paris and “Die Linke” and Varoufakis (DIEM 25) in Berlin.
Originally planned with Iñigo Bandrés (REAS) and Andrés Ruggeri (Argentina researcher on recovered enterprises), this workshop to be held at the end of program at the other end of the city was finally cancelled. RIPESS Europe was still able to intervene in another workshop on “experiences and alternative trade models” with Claude Girod of the peasant Confederation and Brid Brennan of the Transnational Institute.
There was an atmosphere of Social Forum, in a weekend monopolized by the « Brexit » in the media, on the magnificent site of Matadero, old slaughterhouse converted in cultural venue. The 3,000 announced people could attend 30 plenary and workshops.
We can generally affirm that there is a clear consciousness of the European left movements to build an alternative to the European Union, mired in managing catastrophic flows of migrants and different national self-interest, with a single vision of economic austerity. But the consensus is still a long way from being achieved in both divergent scenarios mentioned.
Solidarity economy is not very clearly taken as a political challenge for the desired changes. There is much to do to win this legitimacy and put the issue of economic and ecological alternatives a little more at the heart of a strategy for a more democratic and solidarity based ‘other Europe’ in which we believe in the RIPESS Europe network.
Eric Lavillunière (RIPESS Europe general coordinator)
Published in December 2015, this extensive report provides the main results – in terms of qualitative and quantitative indicators – of the Social audit which includes a total of 320 organisations, members of the regional SSE networks and of REAS, Red de Redes de Economía Alternativa y Solidaria (Alternative and Solidarity Economy and Networks of Network, hereinafter REAS) in Spain.
The information obtained from the surveyed entities in each territorial / sectoral network, provides information and data about 30 issues (relating to the dimension of the organization, its functioning, its commitment and responsible labor, internal democracy and participation within the organization, etc.), with which a total of 19 monitoring indicators of the level of compliance of the 6 inspiring principles of the ESS, described in the REAS “Solidarity Economy Charter”, are analysed.
Download the report (in Spanish)
See an infographic of the social audit results:
Towards discursive integration, both theoretical and practical: this article in Spanish is the result of a research work conducted by the Observatory DESC and the XES during the period 2014-2015, a project for inter-cooperation developed jointly with REAS, which includes some of the main conclusions on the strategic importance of linking a human rights approach, with practices and the approach of solidarity economy, towards a mutual strengthening.
[Article in Spanish follows] Read more
