Your interest in social and solidarity economy may have led you to use the socioeco.org resource web site. Since its beginnings in 2011, the site has evolved a lot: in addition to the 5 main languages, French, Spanish, English, Italian and Portuguese, we can now find documents also in Catalan, German and Greek.

The site works in alliance with other data bases that it references through its search engine. In addition to 15 000 references specific to socioeco.org, there are still 14 000 others of more specialized sites: public policies in favor of SSE, inclusive finance, fair trade, complementary currencies etc; a total of more than 28,000 accessible and largely downloadable references.

This time, we want to talk to you about the new section: “SSE mappings“. Everything started from the desire to highlight the descriptions of initiatives that we collected little by little. Thus was born a first map in OpenStreetMap:

  • The map of SSE solutions: Initiatives are classified by the need they meet: health, food, housing. It also shows that SSE produces differently, consumes differently, organizes the work differently, finances differently, focuses on the concept of territory, etc. The idea is to inspire and spread by reading descriptions of initiatives, more in-depth case studies, watching videos …

This first map then led to new ones:

  • The”Public policies for SSE” map: by putting in place specific filters, we can visualize public policies from municipal to national scope, meeting needs as previously: health, food, etc. But we can also filter by type of policies: do they target a particular audience or sector? Are they related to responsible public procurement? Are these policies aimed at making cities protagonists of change?
  • The “Journalist for solutions” map: shows the alternative, independent and cooperative media that exist around the world but also the articles of these specific media that concern social and solidarity economy. A way of highlighting press articles that concern SSE and are produced by newspapers or magazines that have often chosen a cooperative status.

Two new mappings have come to enrich this section recently :

These are the maps related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the United Nations 2030 Agenda. How does the SSE fit into the pursuit of these SDGs?

First, we took the map of Solutions and then the Public Policies one and classified the initiatives and policies, not by need, but by Sustainable Development Goal. Thus, the Guide to Responsible Public Procurement of the Municipality of Barcelona or the Madrid Ciudad de los Cuidados Plan (Madrid City of Care) are in line with SDG 11 for resilient and sustainable cities. For their part, all the initiatives related to a quality-based, local, solidarity-based and food sovereignty-oriented agriculture (CSA and responsible consumption) are in line with SDG2: End hunger, improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. These are the maps: SSE for the Sustainable Development Goals and “SSE Public Policies for the Sustainable Development Goals”.

Finally, socioeco.org was approached by the Global Curriculum of Social and Solidarity Economy Campaign, with which RIPESS has made an alliance since last year; an educational initiative bringing together already 44 organizations from 18 countries in the South and North. It aims to promote spaces for dialogues between academics, educators and SSE actors form the whole world, with the purpose to establish common principles of SSE training and research that highlight the practices and know-how of the actors but also make visible the diversity of training experiences that exist around the world, among others through:

We hope that this little tour of SSE mappings will be useful. Needless to say, of course, these maps are constantly fed with new resources. If you know of any useful materials that you would like to see referenced on one of these, do not hesitate to write to Françoise Wautiez: fwautiez@socioeco.org