At the Global Youth Forum in July Young Global Advocates from Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece Italy and Slovenia chose the topic of “Cohesion Through Social Economy” as the theme for their Europe-wide campaign. A Working Group of Young Global Advocates have been researching the topic and sharing it with everyone else on the Challenging the Crisis online platform. The challenge now is to narrow down the campaign to a more specific topic.

Social Economy (or Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE)) covers a broad range of economic activity. WikiPedia defines SSE as

However (much like Development Education) there are a broad range of understandings of SSE. In many ways these understandings are being constantly evolved.

The partners of Challenging the Crisis are hosting a series of webinars to deepen our understanding of Social Economy. We have invited an array of interesting guests to speak to us on such topics as Cooperatives, Microfinance, credit unions, the collaborative economy and the competencies we need to create it. Speakers include John Restakis, author of Humanising Capital: Cooperatives in the Age of Capital , representatives of the Irish League of Credit Unions Foundation and their Ethiopian partners and Davie Philip, co-founder of both FEASTA (the Foundation for Economics and Sustainability) and Ireland's first Eco-Village in Cloughjordan.

Recordings of the webinars will be available soon.