Organised thanks to the support of the Foundation for the Progress of Humankind and the APES, at the Bergerie de Villarceaux from 2 to 4 December 2019, the seminar “Co-constructing the Solidarity Economy! “was an opportunity for the members of the Mouvement pour l’Economie Solidaire (MES France) to launch the first steps of the cooperation action plan around the four national cooperative projects at the heart of the ambitions of the Mouvement pour l’Economie Solidaire for the next three years. The working sessions alternated workshops and round tables on the 4 axes :

• Social and citizen innovation at the service of territorial development to pool the tools and methods acquired by the members in their participation in territorialized economic development experiences within a space of shared and formative resources allowing systemic reflection on the subject.

• The evaluation of social utility and social impact in order to establish evaluation as a subject of internal and external democracy within an organization and to integrate it into a continuous improvement process of practices by taking into account market and non-market criteria and the accessibility of existing tools and methods within a space of shared resources.

• Socio-economic models of small SSE enterprises and organisations to support the creation and development of initiatives in rural and urban territories by establishing a panorama of good practices for the creation and consolidation of small SSE organisations and making accessible the methods and tools that promote the sustainability of their economic models at the territorial level.

• Strengthen advocacy through the implementation of a communication and action strategy shared and collective between the MES and the member structures around what the national movement defends and its specificity within SSE in order to build collectively its contribution to the national and international SSE work.

These collective working times reinforce the cohesion of the network by reassuring its members in their strategic orientations and ethical foundations and in return give energy to the animators of the national network confronted with a context of hardening of the political authorities with regard to the citizens’ initiative. The meeting was also an opportunity to inform the participants about the WSFTE and to invite them to take part in it. The document resulting from this seminar will soon be available on the MES website.

By Josette Combes