In service of the global social economy?
This post is intended to introduce the report now published on this blog: The Infrastructure of the Social Economy in the UK. It is also intended as a challenge to our sector to share, serve and act strategically to support the development of the social economy internationally.
Thanks to Nova Ekonomika we have a comprehensive report on the state of the social economy in the UK
I recently completed a piece of work for the Czech Republic based organisation, Nova Ekonomika. The work was to map the infrastructure of the social economy in the UK. Specifically I was tasked to look at what Government has historically done to support the sector’s development and to identify what support provision is available to social economy actors in the UK. The entire report is now published on this blog and all chapters are linked to here.
And it’s internationally of interest
With increasing interest from a host of countries throughout the world in the development of the UK social economy, the publication of this report would appear timely. The British Council is assisting around a dozen countries to explore the UK social economy in an attempt to learn and stimulate development (in Thailand, Indonesia, Croatia, Turkey and China, amongst others). And with the next Skoll World Forum just around the corner, a host of individuals and delegations from across the world are descending on the UK and are picking the collective brains of our sector.
However, structural problems exist between the UK and the rest of the world
There is, however, a problem. Coordination is lacking. Sharing mechanisms for learning are not in place. Information flows appear to be uni-directional (from the UK experts to the visiting ‘beginners’) rather than flowing in both directions, bringing the potential for important learning back to the UK. And let’s not even mention the possibility for networked learning across all contributors.
So it’s time to change this…
So this is an initial contribution and possibly a first step in opening up dialogue and building a platform for the healthy sharing of information, globally. Why I do I think this is needed? Well there’s a huge amount the UK social economy has to share with the world – both good and bad practice. And with many of the interested countries less well off than the UK it’s likely they won’t have the resources to make the same mistakes we’ve made. They may just have one chance to make their social economy work. And to give them their best shot at getting it right I believe we need a level of openness, sharing, and high level strategic planning that is sorely lacking at present.
This is the opening gambit from me to stimulate the right environment for success. Watch this space for a few other swerveballs I’ll be throwing in the forthcoming weeks and months. And please do get in touch if you have something to share or want to take me to task on – on any of the above or any of the report…
And now a quick note on the report
The work turned into a mammoth task: some 110 pages and 27,000 words! Prior to commencement of the work, Nova Ekonomika agreed that the report be made publicly available. So the publication of the report here is down to their forward-thinking and intention to foster public benefit. Everything you see here is published on a Creative Commons license that allows anyone to use it for non-commercial activities as long as the author is credited. And, if you do use it, it would be great if could credit Nova Ekonomika too. Without them this resource would never have been born… So if you want to reuse anything from this report, or indeed from anything from this blog, please go to the end of the table of contents, linked below, to read more about the license arrangements. Thanks.
And then on with the show!
Themocracy
[...] for this months edition. It is a follow on piece from the publication of my Social Economy in the UK mapping report and the Guardian article published the same week as the Skoll World Forum. It is intended, as [...]