organisations offering organisational support in the EU
Neus Giner Garcia
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Looking for ideas/leads on EU based organisations that offer organisational support.
At my work (www.ulexproject.org) we're starting a project (using KA2 Strategic Erasmus+ funding in the field of adult education) with the Solidarity Economy Centre in Budapest.
I've written a similar message to this through the contact section at Coops UK website, but I thought maybe folk here might have ideas or contacts that would be helpful.
At Ulex we support capcacity building for social movements in Europe, and one of the key needs that we are seeing in some of the movements (nothing new really...), is the ability to sustain and grow organisations.
We aim to generate a self-sustaining system of resources and training that can support social change organisations in Hungary to grow and multiply (they are strongly looking at cooperatives as one of the models). We plan for these to be resources that then can be replicated for other countries in Europe too.
The Solidarity Economy Centre have gathered the different needs of organisations in their network, and generated a set of learning outcomes, or even modules, that they would like to cover with this project.
I am in contact with GreaterThan, TheHum and Percolab about the aspects to do with Decision Making, Distribution, Community Building. But I'm thinking we'll need extra input from people that have more expertise supporting the development of legal and business capacity, and capital raising.
Unfortunately due to Brexit and negotiations, we cannot have UK-based partners. Any leads to the co-op movement across Europe will be greatly received!
Neus Giner Garcia Tue 26 Jan 2021 3:30PM
Thank you! I don't think it's quite what we're needing at this stage in terms of primary partners. But will be useful links later on if the project receives funding. I'll keep a note!
Simon Grant Fri 22 Jan 2021 4:37PM
Hi Neus, I'm now based in Belgium and know the people in GreaterThan, TheHum and Percolab (do you know the Percolab Belgium team?). In addition I have a network around the P2P Foundation, and know people in Edgeryders and OuiShare who are all EU-based (though the P2P crowd is very international). If you think my contacts can help you're welcome to ask further. You can reach me on gmail.com as asimong.
Sam Toland Sat 23 Jan 2021 12:38PM
The issue with providing legal/financing advice in Europe is that you are often talking about 27 different statutory regimes - and while there are commonalities, so much of it is bespoke to the jurisdiction the co-op will be HQ'd in.
FairShares (@Rory (FSA)) have quite a history working on bringing a model of solidarity co-ops to different EU jurisdictions - with successful, completed EU projects. There are associated EU organisations that Rory can probably share...
I have a few Irish based organisations I can think of - but whatever support they can provide is tailored to Ireland, and wouldn't necessarily be applicable to any other jurisdiction.. at least on the legal/financial side...
Though University College Cork, Centre for Co-operative Studies do a masters in co-operative enterprise... if you want me link you them, let me know.
Might be worth reaching out to https://platform.coop/ too - they have run a number of courses now in collaboration with Mondragon University on platform co-operativism... Mondragon University probably another organisation to link up with if possible.
Anyway, hope that's of some help.
Neus Giner Garcia Tue 26 Jan 2021 3:27PM
Thank you all!
In the process have also found this: http://starter.coop/wp/coopstarter1/
Sion Whellens (Principle Six/Calverts) · Fri 22 Jan 2021 4:21PM
Hi Neus, I am the UK member rep at https://cecop.coop, the European fed for coops in industry and services (i.e. mainly worker and social coops), whose members are mainly national federations - there isn’t a Hungarian member I think. CECOP undertakes EU funded projects and is well networked in the institutions, and works hard to further the SSE agenda there. Have a look and tell me if you think it would be useful for me to introduce you.