Building Up Social Solidarity Economy project represents a response to several European, national policy and organizational needs. The subject of our educational programme is Social Solidarity Economy (SSE), which means activities based on social, ecological and economic sustainability. Social Economy is still widely understood as creating jobs for the disadvantaged in the job market, while Social Solidarity Economy aims to involve all economic actors in the society based on cooperative and solidarity principles that connect individual needs with those of the community. SSE 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. SSE contributes to the objectives of the Europe 2020 Strategy: the EU becomes a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy, it also tackles the European Consensus on Development “Our World”, “Our Dignity”, “Our Future” responding to the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at its core. The objectives of Build Up SSE projects are 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 organisations another 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 The participants will consist of adult learners - participants of training modules - aiming to get involved in SSE – by establishing their own SSE enterprise, start-up or a non-profit initiative. Their knowledge of SSE will be improved, as well as practical SSE skills. There will also be multipliers and allies, recruited from the engaged adult learners, Regional Meeting and European Congress participants, representatives of local institutions, NGOs, academics and other informal groups willing to promote SSE. There will be 180 participants of all trainings in 3 countries (CZ, SK and PL). The activities will involve 7 intellectual outputs and 14 multiplier events: O1: Training module 1: Establishing of and transformation into an SSE initiative O2: Training module 2: Community Building within SSE O3: Training module 3: SSE Principles within cooperatives O4: Training module 4: SSE in practice based on Food Sovereignty values O5: Supporting booklet for adult learners in CZ, SK, DE, PL and EN O6: Info-pack for SSE trainers and promoters in CZ, SK, DE, PL and EN O7: Visual materials in CZ, SK, DE, PL and EN E1-E4: Multiplier events for O1 to O4 in the Czech Republic; E5-E8: Multiplier events for O1 to O4 in Poland; E9-E12: Multiplier events for O1 to O4 in Slovakia. E13: Regional SSE Meeting in Poland E14: European Multiplier Event – RIPESS Congress As for the methodology, the participatory and collaborative approach will be applied to the project management as well as carrying out the tasks - designing the training modules as well as the trainings themselves. Active learning methods will be used as they favour participatory and experience-based learning as opposed to passive one-sided knowledge transfer. The real examples of good practice will be used to deal with the SSE issues. The personal and on-line meetings will be facilitated on a rotating basis. The overall impact of the Build Up SSE project is to contribute to enhancing skills and knowledge of SSE and its transformative potential. The primary output is to create an informal educational programme on important aspects of SSE at a regional level (CZ, PL, SK). The aim is to develop capacity of participants and disseminate the knowledge and skills acquired and the materials created during the programme. This will be done through multiplier events and other dissemination activities, defined in the dissemination plan. Target groups of the project will consist of engaged adult learners, NGOs and other representatives of civil society, local institutions and academics having acquired knowledge on SSE will have a potential to spread the issue further, which may reflect in policies on local level. The staff members of the project organisations increase their knowledge of SSE values and the SSE reality of certain Central-Eastern European countries. Thanks to the Regional SSE Meeting and and European SSE Congress, the partner organisations will create a regional SSE network and strengthen their position in the European SSE network. This will allow the partner organisations to build stronger partnerships on a local, national and regional level to continue its work on promoting SSE.
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.