Article from Markus Blümel, VSÖK (Verein für Solidarökonomie) 

Erste Social Economy Konferenz in Österreich

First Austrian Social Economy Conference: Cooperating – democratizing – transforming, Nov. 24th, 2022, Graz, Austria

Are you wondering what “Social Economy” means? And why this should be the first conference in Austria? Learn more about it …

The “social economy” – this is the part of the economy that is not primarily oriented towards profit, but towards welfare, democracy and solidarity. Besides the traditional social economy and organisations of the solidarity economy, it also includes so-called social businesses.

The social economy makes a major contribution to prosperity and employment, but also to the necessary socio-ecological transformation. This is currently also recognised and promoted by an action plan of the European Commission.

In Austria, social economy enterprises are not yet supported and publicly perceived to the extent that they should be. The conference wants to change this by making the social economy visible in its importance, diversity, common concerns and justified interests. This is happening in this form for the first time in Austria: therefore the First Austrian Social Economy Conference.

The website currently offers the most important key data on the conference: the programme overview, details on the keynotes, the workshops and the closing panel, information on the conference venue and its accessibility, on the goals and the people and organisations behind it.

– more than 50 contributions
– 3 keynotes (one from Dražen Šimleša, RIPESS-Solidarity Economy
Europe),
– 11 workshops
– panel discussion
– more than 30 organizations from Social Solidarity Economy including
RIPESS – Solidarity Economy Europe
– in German (keynote by RIPESS will be held in English)

More details will be added on an ongoing basis. Check back often here: https://se-conference.uni-graz.at – or register now and we’ll be in touch 🙂

The organising team and the co-organisers.