As we face the deepening of the war economy, we need spaces that help us strengthen the foundations of our ability to cooperate and build collective self-determination within and across our organizations, neighborhoods, cities, and regions.

To that end, the Solidarity Economy Principles Project is convening a workshop series, Foundations of Cooperation for Solidarity Economy, as a three part exploration of the Solidarity Economy organizing framework. 

Those exploring Solidarity Economy (SE) for the first time as well as longer-time practitioners seeking to build out SE infrastructure rooted in shared principles and values are welcome to attend. We especially encourage organizations involved in this work to send a group of their members to think and learn together with us.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY SOLIDARITY ECONOMY?

The Solidarity Economy is grown from the land, water, climate and cultures of a region. It is made up of a variety of organizational forms related to each other formally or informally in value flows of creation, care, production, exchange, use, and allocation of surplus. Examples of such organizations are worker cooperative businesses; collective farms; community land trusts; mutual aid networks; popular assemblies and participatory budgeting processes; consumer cooperatives organized around food, housing, funerals, composting and energy; alternative currencies and time banks; savings pools; and credit unions.

Solidarity Economy is a global movement as well as an organizational framework for economic transformation from the bottom up, beginning with connecting and networking these diverse practices.

WORKSHOP INTENTIONS AND TAKEAWAYS

This workshop series is a three part exploration of the Solidarity Economy organizing framework. Through international and historical case studies, tools and frameworks, and participatory discussions based in our own experiences, participants will come away with:

• A nuanced appreciation of why it’s so important that co-ops/ SE orgs not operate in isolation or in sectoral silos; 
• Deeper understandings of the many organizing strategies co-ops/ SE orgs can use to support each other, tackle challenges, build shared resources, and expand spaces for economic democracy beyond our individual organizations – and the crucial role that co-operative and solidarity economy associations and federations play in supporting and coordinating these many strategies; 
• Tools and insights to support regional SE organizing – how to be strategic about nurturing the conditions needed for the SE to grow while also allowing for emergence and complexity. 

Woven throughout the three workshops are the Solidarity Economy Principles (SEP), which can help us reflect on the values, priorities, relationships & processes we need to prioritize in order for the Solidarity Economies we build to be transformative and not reproduce existing inequalities — so they redistribute power and resources to those who have been most harmed by white supremacy, settler colonialism, patriarchy, ableism, and capitalism. 

Each workshop will also: 

• Identify what we are healing from, unlearning and rethinking;
• Identify common myths/ pitfalls; 
• Emphasize what makes the SE approach different from other (on the surface) “similar” approaches – providing tools and frameworks to identify/ understand what’s at stake in the choices we make about how we organize/ how we do co-op development/ how we build out ecosystems.

The interactive and participatory workshops will build on each other, developing a shared orientation towards SE organizing that is grounded in the experiences of participants, the SE principles, and an emphasis on the creation of value chains, federations and regional organizations. The sessions will not be recorded.

SESSION DESCRIPTIONS 

Thursday, April 23

Session 1: Conditions and Definitions

In this session we will explore the challenges/ obstacles/ tensions/ contradictions that co-ops and Solidarity Economy (SE) organizations face when operating within predominantly capitalist economies, and clarify key terms and concepts.

Facilitators will guide participants in sharing their experiences of the challenges and tensions of working in and organizing SE and cooperative projects within capitalism to develop a shared analysis of our current conditions. We will develop working definitions of key terms and concepts that will support our work together in Session 2: Building Together.

Click here to register for session 1. 

Thursday May 21

Session 2: Building Together 

In this session we will look at the power of relationship building among co-ops and SE orgs to build trade networks, value chains and federations based on collective self-determination.

Thursday June 25

Session 3: Movement and Orientations

In this session we will examine SE movements from various countries and clarify how transformative SE movements differ from other approaches that use cooperative development and SE language while reproducing existing inequalities.