What is the Transformative Potential of Social and Solidarity Finance?

UNRISD organized a workshop on “Social and Solidarity Finance: Tensions, Opportunities and Transformative Potential” on 11 – 12 May 2015, in collaboration with Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and International Labour Organization (ILO). Experts tackled the following questions: What is Social and Solidarity Finance? Could it finance Social and Solidarity Economy? What is the Transformative Potential?

This workshop brought together an interdisciplinary group of 29 experts—in the fields of alternative finance, economic sociology and the anthropology of money. They looked at the transformative potential of social and solidarity finance from a South-South and triangular cooperation perspective. The workshop took place at a time when financing for development and the post-2015 sustainable development agenda are high on the UN’s list of priorities.

A meeting of the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Social and Solidarity Economy was held in conjunction with the workshop, to ensure the policy impact of event.

As outcome, a sentence was drafted by experts at the workshop that they wished to see included in the future Outcome Document of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) on 13-16 July 2015, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The recommendation received the support of the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Social and Solidarity Economy and of the Secretariat of the International Leading Group on Social and Solidarity Economy.

We are also pleased to share with you the event brief, which gathered the workshop’s main insights.

The workshop concept note, background note and experts’ contributions are also available at: http://www.unrisd.org/ssf-workshop