Panorama meeting in Florence, 4 to 6 March 2016

A meeting on the RIPESS EU “Panorama of Social Solidarity Economy in Europe” took place in Florence from 4 to 6 March, 2016, with some major advancements and new energy in the process.  You can find an overview of the Panorama projet here.

Eight countries and fifteen networks / organisations were represented in Florence by the following participants: Jason Nardi (Italy, Solidarius), Josette Combes (France, M.E.S.), Françoise Wautiez (France, Socioeco.org), Matt Wallis (Institute for Solidarity Economics, Uk), Luca Asperius (both Italy, l’Italia che cambia and Germany Forum Solidarische Oekonomie – Post-Solikon); Christine Papadopoulou (Greece, Festival for Solidarity and Cooperative Economy), Giorgia Bekidrakis (Greece, Solidarity for All), Marirosa Iannelli (Italy, COSPE and SUSY European project), Alipio Muniz (Spain, REAS and Eco-alternative.net), Luis Miguel Dantas (Portugal, RedPES), Jordi Ribas (XES Catalunia), Gaelle Bigler (Switzerland, Urgenci), Virgina Meo (Italy, Rete di Economia Solidale and Susy project,) and Adanella Rossi (Italy, Rete di Economia Solidale).

Several Italian guests were also present: Jacopo Cappelli, developer of Go-fair.eu, a mapping app on fair trade and solidarity finance entities all over Europe. Tommaso Rondinella from the Italian Institute for Statistics and several grassroots organization to speak about the building of indicators. Gabriella D’Amico (Italy, Fairwatch) was present through online connection.

The networks have identified several issues to feed the Panorama process and working plan

The 2 days meeting allowed to discuss many issues stemming from the different aspects of the work and activities involved in making a Panorama.

1. Clear definitions of SSE concepts, in particular as so many different approached are emerging (the commons, sharing economy, etc)
2. A shared agenda of events where the Panorama can be presented and the survey conducted;
3. A way to give feedback to the people who already answered the survey, with a brief first report on emerging trends;
4. Continue to work on the criteria of interoperability between the SSE mappings (ESSglobal) in order to dynamically reproduce in one “layered” map an image as complete as possible
5. What format to communicate the results of Panorama: a report, a video, infographics, maps… ? 
6. Internal tools to communicate between Ripess / Panorama members
7. A good description of the SSE networks, starting from thoses that are part of RIPESS, how they are structured, what their priorities and major strategic orientations are;
8. Education and training tools
9. Collaboration with medias and contribution to the public opinion debates
10. Promotion, campaigning
11. Building trust, a process of validation ( a label?)
12. Make visible the legal frameworks and public policies on SSE

Several tools were explored:

• The reference indicators for SSE, with the example of the BES (Benessere Equo Sostenibile), that tries to measure well-being in Italy;
• Different mappings: Go-Fair,in Italy and Europe, Ecolaternative.net in Spain, Rede Convergir in Portugal; the map of SSE solutions on socioeco.org
• A tool to build common definitions for SSE (possibly the encylcopedia of SSE on socioeco.org built as wikipedia and already in 7 languages)

The next steps :