CSA, cohousing,biocoops, recycling,, renewable energy cooperatives, food coop… What is it that allows these thousands of initiatives, this system of values that underpins the social and solidarity economy, to form a system? To create a movement? How can they be made more visible?

This is the question that the Charles Léopold Meyer Foundation, which has been contributing to the emergence of the social and solidarity economy since the early 2000s, asked itself. In 2011, it decided to set up a common resource site with an international vocation that pursues several objectives:

• to demonstrate the richness and relevance of the vision of the economy carried by the SSE and its potential for systemic transformation;
• to identify the solidarity economy by bringing together on a single site content that is scattered across the net;
• to show the extent of research on its various components and descriptions of initiatives, hoping to inspire new approaches in the various territories;
• to allow citizens, and more particularly students, researchers, journalists and local elected officials, to find information on the SSE more easily;

The site was very quickly linked to the Network for the Promotion of the Social Solidarity Economy, RIPESS Intercontinental and to RIPESS Europe, with the idea of expanding its use and dissemination.

This is how socioeco.org was born, an online library that has the particularity of being in 5 main languages: French, English, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. Each language has its own content. But also Greek or Romanian, according to the documentary watch that feeds the site or the projects set up by RIPESS members.

socioeco.org