Building up Social Solidarity Economy Erasmus Project

Project Title

Building up Social Solidarity Economy

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Social entrepreneurship / social innovation; Regional dimension and cooperation; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Our project represents a response to several European, national policy and organizational needs. The subject of our educational program created in the project is Social Solidarity Economy (SSE), which means activities based on social, ecological and economic sustainability. Social Solidarity Economy aims to involve all economic actors in the society, through cooperative and solidarity (local) circuit exchanges that connect individual needs with those of the community. SSE thus aims to produce, exchange and consume goods and services that meet the economic and social needs of local and international communities with an ecosystemic approach. It promotes economic democracy, social justice, environmental awareness, gender equity and a pluralist, multicultural society
In Poland, Slovakia and Czech Republic social economy is officially recognized as a tool for integrating disadvantaged people in the labor market. However, this definition of SSE doesn’t comprise its possibility of enhancing social, ecological and economic sustainability.
What’s important is the fact that even some institutions that work on fostering the SSE, also have a limited vision on SSE and its real potential. It is important to change the narrative and to stress that SSE can be an alternative to the mainstream economy focused on unlimited growth – the alternative that will spread democracy, cooperation and social and ecological justice. In order to make it possible, we decided to follow these objectives:

The objectives of Build Up SSE projects were the following:
• promote SSE in CZ, SK, PL by creating practical training modules that will encourage participant to initiate an activity based on SSE principles
• enhance much needed and viable regional cooperation in Central-Eastern Europe
• learn from one another (among project partner organizations) through sharing SSE skills, knowledge and expertise
• learn from good practice examples of SSE
• advocate the SSE values on local, national and international level
• share the specifics of SSE context in Central-Eastern Europe

All of the objectives were met:
– practical training modules on four SSE topics were created and through pilot testings and other multiplier events, SSE was promoted in the project countries
– thanks to the project partnership and the international multiplier events, regional cooperation was strengthened
– project partner organizations shared their knowledge and skills when working on the intellectual outputs, and also after the multiplier events, giving valuable feedback
– by learning about the good practice examples from SSE, the participants could see how the SSE initiatives work in reality and they learned practical skills.

Altogether there were 230 participants in the project events – there were 166 participants in the module trainings and 64 participants in the international multiplier events.

During this project we decided to share the knowledge and know-how especially within people who are already interested in SSE or new with this concept, but who understand the need of a socio-ecological transformation. Beside them we invited also experts on SSE or informal education to counsel during the process and to give us feedback on the outputs of our project.

The activities aimed to underline within all various outputs that SSE initiatives are totally viable and economically sustainable projects by showing the real examples. Activities organized during the project were prepared not only to show how to successfully establish and run a SSE initiative or enterprise. Thanks to the booklets for learners and trainers (O5 and O6) we created a potential for multipliers to share the knowledge even further.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 154410,6 Eur

Project Coordinator

Ekumenická akademie, z. s. & Country: CZ

Project Partners

• Stowarzyszenie Kooperatywa Spozywcza “Dobrze”
• Katholische Sozialakademie Österreichs
• Utopia
• RIPESS EUROPE