Social and Solidarity Economy: Our common road towards Decent ...

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SOCIAL AND SOLIDARITY ECONOMY ACADEMY Box 1.1: The International Cooperative Alliance The International Cooperative Alliance was founded in London in 1895. It currently has 223 members that operate in all sectors of activity, particularly in agriculture, insurance, banking, consumers, housing, industry, fisheries, health and tourism, with a total membership of some 800 million people throughout the world. The Mondragón Corporation in the Spanish Basque region is a well-known example of a territory-embedded enterprise. In the 1950s, the local population started work on a truly industrial complex in order to rebuild the regional economy which had been destroyed by the Civil War and the Second World War. Mondragón has now become an International Cooperative Group employing more than 92,000 people, mostly in industry and retail sectors (Mondragon CC, 2010). In the United Kingdom, the cooperative group includes about 75,000 employees and spends many resources on supporting new cooperatives and community initiatives. In recognition of the potential of cooperatives to prevent and reduce poverty and to provide employment opportunities, the General Assembly of the United Nations has declared that 2012 will be the International Year of the Cooperatives in order to “encourage all Member States, as well as the United Nations and all other relevant stakeholders, to take advantage of the International Year of Cooperatives as a way of promoting cooperatives and raising awareness of their contribution to social and economic development” (UN Resolution A/RES/64/136, Operational Paragraph 3). 1.2.2 Mutual benefit societies Organizations for mutual aid have existed for a very long time just about everywhere. Mutual benefit societies are organizations whose objective is essentially to provide social services for their individual members and their dependants. These societies – whether formal or informal – meet the need of communities to organize collective social relief themselves by sharing a wide variety of risks: health care, medicines, illness (such as from sickness or accidents), material support for bereaved families, repatriation of a body, expenditures incurred in rituals (such as burial societies), poor harvests, poor fishing seasons, etc. Mutual benefit societies provide services through a mechanism where risks are shared and resources are pooled. The main differences between these and classical insurance companies is that mutual benefit societies are not-for-profit and they do not select their members nor calculate members’ premiums on the basis of their individual risks. Many mutual benefit structures operate in the social protection sector. The Association Internationale de la Mutualité (AIM) was established in the 1950s. It unites 40 federations or associations of autonomous mutual benefit societies in health and social protection in 26 countries across the world. The AIM affiliates operate according to the principles of solidarity and non-profit, providing coverage for more than 170 million people throughout the world. In the insurance sector, the International Cooperatives and Mutual Insurance Federation (ICMIF) represents the interests of both cooperatives and mutual benefit organizations. The ICMIF has a current membership of 212 affiliates in 73 countries. Some labour force rotation schemes or informal rotating savings and credit associations (also known as tontines in some parts of the world) can be associated with the mutual and benefit societies in the sense that they combine societal development and social interaction with economic or financial functions (labour force or savings and credit), where the participants decide on the conditions and rules. The service provided is part of a social relationship which creates and resolves reciprocal obligations and shared interests (Servet, 2006). 1.2.3 Associations and community-based organizations Freedom of association is a recognized human right, but its practice depends on how it is safeguarded in national jurisdictions and on the acceptance and support of such undertakings. In practice, the SSE may be seen as a framework to realize different 2 READER
SOCIAL AND SOLIDARITY ECONOMY ACADEMY forms of individual freedom of association as it aims to produce goods or services on a continuous basis without being primarily focused on profit (Develtere & Defourny, 2009). The countless numbers of associations, voluntary organizations, community-based organizations, non-profit organizations and Portrait of a Bolivian villager. economic interest groups form a heterogeneous group and operate in every possible field. Whether “modern” or “community-based” or “traditional”, they all operate on the same basis (e.g. negotiated rules and reciprocity guaranteed in particular by social control) and pursue similar aims (e.g. economic utility or creating and maintaining social bonds). One of the objectives of associations built up around community links in the SSE has been, and still is, to reduce the gap between individuals and the authorities. Associations have many advantages; for example, their establishment and operating methods are relatively flexible and they provide a basis for new forms of sociability (particularly in urban areas). Considerable efforts have been made over the last ten years to increase our knowledge of associations, 21 and particularly of the non-profit sector which, as suggested by a vast research programme coordinated by Johns Hopkins University, accounts for most of the association component of the social economy and part of the mutual aid component that has legal status. The latest findings of this programme (Salamon et al., 2003) reveal that among the 35 countries examined most closely by the study, the non-profit sector accounts for about 39.5 million full-time workers, including 21.8 million paid workers and 12.6 million volunteers (Defourny & Develtere, 2009). 1.2.4 Social enterprises Social entrepreneurship is a relatively recent concept and a strong emerging phenomenon. In Europe and in North America, the phenomenon emerged in the crisis context during the late 1970s as a response to unmet social needs and the limits of traditional social and employment policies to tackle social exclusion (Nyssens, 2006). This phenomenon grew from the will of some voluntary associations to create jobs for people excluded from the traditional labour market and from individual entrepreneurs who wanted to run businesses but with pronounced social purposes. Social enterprises refer to a variety of situations. Different definitions are proposed. According to ILO / Maillard J. 21 The first studies to identify the contours of the social economy from an international comparative perspective, and to quantify its three components, were carried out by a group of researchers from 11 European and North American countries. These studies came under the patronage of the International Centre of Research and Information on the Public and Cooperative Economy (CIRIEC) (Defourny & Monzon Campos, 1992). READER 3
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