Topic outline
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Social Solidarity Economy represents an alternative vision of economy and a response to the unrestrained globalisation and the mainstream economy that focuses exclusively on profit and economic growth. Development of different SSE initiatives both in Europe and worldwide, especially after the economic and fi-nancial crises in 2008 clearly demonstrate that more and more alternatives are possible and that they really work. Sustainable living, working and determining solutions collectively has become a way to live better for many people who refuse the concepts of individual entrepreneurship and competition.So if you are interested in founding an SSE initiative or you are part of an organisation or collective that you would like to transform and help it to become a more solidary and democratic one, this booklet and especially this first chapter will be a useful source of ideas, inspiration or resources to support you in your efforts. The following pages give you a glimpse of the topic and help you find out a few things that might be important to deal with at the beginning, and also what to consider when running an SSE.Pages: 6 Assignments: 2 File: 1
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SSE start up initiatives rarely boast great infrastructure or financial resources, but it is the people, their skills and knowledge that form the core of SSE. All enterprises need to be supported by building a community to ensure their healthy development, sustainability and resilience.
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Cooperativism encompasses a range of cooperative practices and values that challenge the status quo while, at the same time, creating alternative modes of economic, cultural, social, and political life. Throughout the 20th century, cooperative modes of organising social, cultural, and economic life proved to be viable alternatives to centrally planned or capitalist modes of production, distribution, and consumption, and in the recent years have emerged with new dynamism.Cooperativism as the social movement strives to foster social and economic rights and meet everyday needs of people through voluntary associations called co-operatives.Pages: 6 Assignments: 2
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The eminent goal for the humanity is to ensure enough safe and nutritious food for everyone, i.e. to provide Food Security. However from the long term perspective this is not enough. If we consider that most of cases of famine in modern history did not happen due to insufficient food stocks. They happened because of poverty and exploitation.
In contrast to Food Security, Food Sovereignty aims to guarantee sustainable agricultural practice with respect for nature and the rights of all people without exception. It is deeply linked to fundamental questions of power and democracy. As Nettie Weibe of the Via Campesina says: “Who controls food producing resources such as land, water, seeds and genetic resources, and for what purpose? Who gets to decide what is grown, how and where it is grown and for whom? Food Sovereignty includes the necessary discourse about power, freedom, democracy, equality, justice, sustainability and culture. Food is taken out of the realm of being primarily a market commodity and re-embedded in the social, ecological, cultural and local contexts as a source of nutrition, livelihood, meaning and relationships.
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