Coinciding with the 10thEMESconf, we’re holding our second consortium meeting at Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam.
We started out presenting the most recent achievement of the project, namely, an impressive overview of WISEs across Europe. It represents a preliminary glimpse of a complex ecosystem and here are some takeaway points:
- Citizen mobilization has been a critical developmental trend of WISEs across Europe.
- Tension between theoretical definitions and the legal implementation that has taken place in some countries. In some cases, when they were introduced top-down the success in strengthening the community.
- The idea of self-recognition is key as in many cases not having this sense of identity prevents them from benefitting from the existing opportunities.
- Recognising WISEs in a wider area of Social Economy is very important at a critical point in policymaking in Europe.
- Innovative trends within WISEs are promising: activity areas are expanding and generating new spaces for innovation (e.g. social farming) and collaboration with non Social Economy organizations is taking place with interesting formats.
- The three major Socialeconomy and Wise networks are here and will be able to share their views on this tool.
The next steps include:
- Working on a policy brief covering this interesting tool as a way to raise awareness about the current context and developmental trends of WISEs in Europe.
- Selecting the cases that will be the focus of the project in the next year. There are many possible ways to move forward given the richness of the sector, so stay tuned to learn how we select them and which ones they are in every country.
The meeting continues with fascinating discussions plus there will be several opportunities to learn more about WISESHIFT project this week at the 10th EMES conference.