Workshops are the framework where debate takes place. They are the collective working tool from which proposals of socio-economic transformation emerge. These proposals are exposed to other points of view when workshop participants attend international meetings and seminars. Proposals are finally published in the Alliance 21 Proposal Notebooks and later promoted among civil society organisations and networks.

A workshop is an international group of people who debate by means of an electronic forum and work meetings. It is open to anyone and we actively encourage diversity as a way to make debate richer. We also believe that debate should be organised and structured. That is why each workshop has:

• A co-ordination committee, gathering some of the most active participants
• An animator, responsible for setting up an initial group of participants and for moderating the electronic forum discussion.
• A facilitator, in charge of all technical issues of the electronic forum and the translation of each message into French and Spanish.

Regarding content, there are two kinds of workshops. First of all, Thematic workshops where a specific issue/topic is discussed.

On the other hand what gives WSSE a greater added value as a think-tank is its global, systemic approach. All previous experience with thematic workshops has shown that they often complement each other and they integrate themselves into an overall Solidarity Socio-Economic system. Therefore, since 2001, a second generation of workshops has emerged from all previous ones: we call them Transversal Thematic workshops.