The role of public policies in favour social and solidarity economy suffers from a lack of visibility. Yet these same policies can prove decisive in helping collective initiatives that involve citizens to emerge. We would like to showcase existing public policy on SSE through a compilation of case studies and mapping that highlights the policies that contribute to creating territorial ecosystems that encourage the development of SSE through:

– funding, public markets, fiscal, legal and legislative mechanisms, social audits, etc.
– accompanying the actors working to support SSE at territorial level
– encouraging contact, exchange and networking of these actors
– relocalising activities linked to food, transport, energy, etc.
– thus creating sustainable, relocalised employment
– show-casing good practice
– building new spaces for discussion and joint development of policies with citizens.

SSE needs to “tell its story” to inspire people and disseminate. What public policies have a real impact on helping SSE initiatives to emerge and to develop? We believe that by collecting as many case studies as possible, enhanced by mapping them, would provide a useful tool for sharing, and that could be used by all our respective sites and other instruments (mobile APPs, infographs, etc.). This is something we can decide together.

The socioeco.org site has recently allowed us to develop a carte des solutions (map of solutions). It collects the descriptions of SSE initiatives that have been identified according to needs (food, housing, health, education etc.). It is in 6 languages (French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian). The map also provides more opportunities: it is possible to identify alternative media or research centres for SSE, select only food experiences or reproduce a specific part of the map in a message on your own website. We thought of using a specific map of solutions for public policies and the territories that support them.

RIPESS Europe and socioeco.org hope to present a first map with the descriptions of public policies in different countries and different languages at the World Forum of Social Economy GSEF2016, that will be held in Montreal from 7th-9th September, to demonstrate the potential of such a tool and find new partners to develop the project further.

We need your help to do this. Your network has identified concrete public policies at different territorial levels: Local, regional or national Authorities. We propose you to fill the form linked here which will allow the collection of information and the compilation of a list of institutions at different levels which promote public policies for the development of the SSE, starting from what already exists and that we plan to showcase. We will then make all this information organised and visible by using shared tools and creating a visual public mapping.

Info and communications:
fwautiez@socioeco.org
polpub@ripess.eu