The World
Social Forum IV took place, for the first time,
in Asia, in Mumbai (India). This was perceived
as a big opportunity to pursue the successful
coordination the WSSE together with the
SE promoters networks at the two previous Forums in Porto Alegre by organizing a set of joint events.
In Porto Alegre, good progress was made in
terms of collective preparation work, of improved
display and promotion of concepts, proposals
and strategies, of synergies, and, common
action and reflection. In particular, the
last WSF, enabled a collective project
to present topical
and global synthesis reports in a final
SE Seminar, as well as the presentation of
the global synthesis report to the Final Panel
of the WSF topical Axe 1, with improved recognition
of the SE. The Solidarity Economy Networks
present were mainly Latin- American, European
and North American. Very few participants
were from Africa and Asia.
In Asia, the concept of Solidarity Economy (SE) is not well known and there are no SE National Networks. But there are a lot of economic alternatives to the dominant system, known as the People's Economy.
The new challenge was to create links with
initiatives that belong to this movement and
are part of the SE family. That meant:
To achieve these goals, the Workgroup on Solidarity Socio-Economy (WSSE) made a proposal to the other SE networks:
Thus the Promoters Network organized a common programme including:
1/ A Panel: "Towards
a People's Economy: Realities and Strategies
from local to global” with a representative
from each continent (see texts of the contributions).
2/ Seven Seminars on the
themes already developed during WSF
III:
3/ a general summary Seminar
of the events on the solidarity economy
The WSSE printed and distributed close to
2000 programs displaying these joint events,
as well as about 50
seminars and workshops related to the Solidarity
Economy - which had been identified in
the Official Program of the WSF, thus facilitating
the links between the networks which are already
members of the coordination framework and
other networks or social movements sharing
common interests: this represented sixty events,
that is about 5% of the 1200 events of the
WSF.
The Workshops Women
and Economy, Social
Money, Fair
Trade and Ecological
Debt co-organized or organized 1/5 of
these additional events.
WSSE participation
