Asian Alliance for Solidarity Economy

Dear all,

Here are some “fresh” news right after the Asia Citizens Assembly.

The assembly went extremely well. John really thought about
everything. He put together an amazing team of 20- and 30-year-old people from all over the world. One of John’s fantastic ideas was to organize an international youth camp exactly one month before the assembly, to build three houses together with the inhabitants of a small town, and therefore help those people who were most in need. The group built, together with some builders from the town, those three houses for three mothers with large families. This life experience helped consolidate the group. Its members became friends… and then took on the task of organizing the assembly.

There were about two hundred participants. In the case of the Asian Assembly, the challenge was having delegations from various countries of the continent come and take part in it. And it was clearly fulfilled: there were groups from China, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Iran, Afghanistan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and India. There was also a dozen delegates from different regions of those countries, and there were people from Bangalore, of course.

A rather distinct characteristic that this assembly had was that about 80% of the participants were young people between the ages of 20 and 30. This had to do, clearly, with the fact that John was a key part in the process and that his association, Global Citizens for Sustainable Development, was organizing it. Another key ingredient provided by John was the organization of a first Youth Assembly two days prior to the beginning of the Asian Assembly. Young people, then, were a step ahead in the game.

Another strong characteristic of the Asian Assembly was that almost 60% of the participants were women, mostly of whom were young women from China and South Korea. I could also see, though, that female presence was very strong in the delegations from India, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia as well. The delegation from Iran was more evenly distributed: three men and four women, two of whom were the speakers of the group.

As far as the participation of the various socio-professional groups
is concerned, the students were clearly the majority. Two other groups with an important presence were the inhabitants, thanks to the mobilization of the International Alliance of Inhabitants, and the rural organizations, thanks to the presence of groups from forest communities. There were also university participants, religiousbleaders, government officials, state organisms and a remarkablebpresence of artists.

Yet another fantastic idea coordinated by John and his team was to have the assembly rest upon what has been called “the art Caravan of the Silk Route”. So every morning we began with art presentation sessions and each night, from 6 p.m. on, we had theatre, dancing, singing, hip hop, Chinese calligraphy and many more activities. I didn’t want to interfere at first, but people’s requests were so strong and persistent that I couldn’t but have the pleasure of eventually singing “Cucurrucucú Paloma” and “Cambia Todo Cambia” together with a young guitarist. The troupe of drummers from Bangalore also shook us to our bones.

As regards the content, the key of the Assembly was working, from the very beginning, on a wide, coherent, thematic group of issues. John has already told us about the “5 E’s”: Ethics, Education, Economy, Equity, Ecology. This framework was kept till the very end. The main part of the work was carried out in groups within workshops. There were only three plenary sessions, one at the beginning and one at the end, and the third one, halfway through the Assembly, about a rather sensitive issue in the region: “religions and governance”. Most of the assembly developed within workshops of 30 to 40 participants each.

Ben Quinones – who was with us in the Paris meeting – had suggested a simple but efficient methodology: two key questions about each of the five “E’s” (Which is its vision for Asia? and Which is its mission for Asia?) set on a personal level and on a collective level. We didn’t spend much time, then, analysing the problems of the regions, but rather we tried to focus on a vision for the future, while being conscious -at the same time – of the problems (related to education, ecology, etc.) and, above all, of what each person does and will do to solve them, on a personal and collective level.

For the final plenary session and each of the workshops’ report (two people were responsible for each workshop), we came up with the idea to organize a sort of Market of Ideas and Proposals, to avoid any long, boring readings of the workshop reports. Each workshop “exhibited” what had been done during the two previous days and explained their visions and missions to the “visitors”. You felt as if you were in a real fair or market, but it was a market of ideas, shared experiences and, above all, proposals. People talked, asked questions, took down notes about the workshops and had pictures taken with the facilitators and speakers. In other words, instead of trying to find a single final synthesis report that was complete and perfect, we chose human interaction, in which each participant made an attempt to create the right vision of the Assembly’s content. That is, instead of making a thematic mapping on a PC, each participant and their group put together their own conceptual map. This Market of Ideas might be hard to explain, but it turned out to be a great initiative from the methodological viewpoint, and it allowed us to generate a more dynamic final plenary session.

I can’t deny some of the university participants’ amazement at this method. Some of them just wanted to a succession of PowerPoint
presentations during a plenary session. Ben, John and I managed to stick to our proposal, though. We told them that this was not the university, that in a citizens’ assembly the words from a leader, a community or a peasant in their native tongue were as important as those of a participant from a university. Of course, we accepted PowerPoint presentations, but only within the workshops, and they had to last 10 minutes and jumpstart the dialog. Only some of the workshops used this method and one of the most stubborn university participants eventually agreed to join in the game proposed. A Chinese university participant, who coordinated a Chinese group, actually ended up admitting that this method and assembly were one of the best lessons in her life.

Many of us noticed that the very structure of the great conference room where the plenary sessions were held had changed: at first, the chairs were distributed like in a classroom, with an, elevated podium at the front; at the end, though, several circles were formed during the Market of Ideas, until a great circle was reached at the final plenary session.

The closing session was all about the future. It was considered that there was no immediate need to set a date for a new Asian Assembly, and it was clear that the assembly was not a mere meeting, an isolated event, but it was rather a social, political and cultural process. So first it is necessary to carry out what has been said and proposed.

The future will tell us when and where the second Asian Citizens Assembly can be organized. Our final text is a ten-page synthetic compilation of the workshop reports. All the written and visual material (photos and videos) will be available online soon. The team of facilitators and speakers is going to put together a platform on the Internet, aside from the web page already launched by Global Citizens for Sustainable Development, to keep in touch and make the information circulate. All the documents, pictures and videos will be uploaded on the Assembly’s site soon and distributed through Facebook, except in China where Facebook is banned

A preliminary compilation of the pictures can be seen through this link:

http://www.asambleas-ciudadanos.net/spip.php?article437

As regards language, we used mostly English. Some of the accents turned out to be quite difficult to understand, I must add. We also had to use two other languages: Kannada, spoken by the communities around Bangalore, and Hindi. We nonetheless found, quiet spontaneously, some interpreters who helped us understand the “Asian English”. Objectively, the language was never an issue, especially because the artistic presentations and smiles around us made communication truly pleasant and profound.

Anyway, what I really wanted to tell you was the snapshot feelings
imprinted on me, the emotional state I’m in right now, which has led me to write these lines.

See you soon in Aioun and then in Iquique in the Southern Cone…

Warm regards,

Gustavo

by: Miguel Yasuyuki Hirota (mig@olccjp.net)

1. SE’s achievements in Asia

The arrival of the concept of SE to Asia was rather late in comparison with other continents and it was only October 2007 when the 1^st Asian Forum for SE took place at Manila, the Philippines.  Workshops on solidarity economy took place in October 2008 at Bangkok, Thailand and in March 2009 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia when the Asian Alliance for SE (AA4SE, http://www.aa4se.com/) was established, but the term SE is still very little known, even in comparison with Europe or Latin America.

But this does not mean that SE is foreign to Asia: there are indeed a number of unarticulated grass-root practices in many countries, such as consumers’ coops and NPO Banks in Japan, social enterprises in Korea, microfinance initiatives (remember that this movement was born in Bangladesh!) all over the region, local currencies in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, elderly-care groups in Japan and CSR-minded small businesses throughout Southeast Asia, just to name a few.

2. Challenges for Asia

Some challenges should be taken into account seriously if we are to promote SE and to articulate its players all over this continent.

Linguistic diversity: it should be remembered that Asia has a number of mutually-unintelligible languages, such as: Bengali (Bangladesh), Burmese (Myanmar), Cambodian (Cambodia), Hindi-Urdu (India and Pakistan), Japanese (Japan), Korean (North and South Korea), Lao (Laos), Mandarin (China and Taiwan), Malay-Indonesian (Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore), Mongolian (Mongolia), Sinhalese (Sri Lanka), Filipino (the Philippines), Tamil (India, Sri Lanka etc.), Thai (Thailand), Vietnamese (Vietnam).  While in some countries English is widely spoken, it should be taken into account that most SE players in Asia only speak their respective country’s official language (Thai if they live in Thailand, for instance), making it tough for SE players to be articulated and to communicate each other beyond the language barrier (=internationally).

This linguistic diversity poses another challenge on promoting SE in each Asian country too: since most people, including professors and public servants, are often not good at English, it is required that at least some basic information in SE should be given in each country’s official language so that opinion leaders throughout the continent could share our perspective on SE and let it known to people in their respective language.

Geographical and psychological distance from other continents: another important remark is that most countries where the SE movement has been consolidated are non-English-speaking countries (France, Italy, Spain, Latin America and Québec) with which Asians usually do not have strong relationship. The traditional lack of links between these continents makes it harder for Asians to grasp what is happening globally in terms of SE and to exchange experiences with them.

3. Perspectives and proposals for the next decade

Although the consolidation of SE players in Asia is still in an early stage, the coming years will see important events, such as the 3^rd Asian Forum in Malaysia in 2011 and the 5^th RIPESS conference in 2013.  It is quite important to make the best use of all available resources in order to maximise our synergy and take more steps forward.  Some proposals are done below to help promote the SE movement in Asia:

Creation of multilingual platforms: the lack of information on SE and of international communication among Asian SE players has been the biggest hurdle, so it is crucial to set up platforms to get it over.  I would like to suggest the creation of following tools so that more Asians should be familiar with SE and be articulated better.  Obviously a huge amount of money would be required for translation services, but this cost should be regarded as something indispensable (Can you sell U.S. soap operas in Mexico without dubbing or subtitling in Spanish?) and efforts should be done to win such a funding.

-       Creation of another portal website on SE in Asian languages (not only English but also Chinese, Japanese, Thai etc.): this is not to deny AA4SE’s efforts, but it would be ideal if more information could be provided in more Asian languages so that SE players, researchers, policymakers etc. could learn what SE is, how SE is practiced in Asia and other continents etc.

-       Creation of multilingual communication method: the multilingual discussion groups managed by Alliance 21 WSSE (now ALOE) with translation service between English, French and Spanish / Portuguese has been a key factor on articulating SE players and to stimulate communications among them, but it is crucial to provide similar services among key Asian languages if we are to expect same results. More SE players are expected to be articulated only when they feel linguistically comfortable, so it is indispensable to set up a platform in which people could communicate in Chinese, Indonesia, Japanese, Thai and other Asian languages.

Exchange of young SE players / students: it is essential that more Asians should understand how SE has been growing in the world in order to transfer such experiences to their own countries.  So it would be helpful if some programmes could be set up to promote exchange of the youth.  The mutual exchange (not only Asian youth to other continents but youths from other continents to Asia) would strengthen mutual understanding in terms of SE practices, and such articulators will help both quantitative and qualitative development of solidarity economy in Asia.

by Ben Quiñones

Below is my report to the International Forum – Globalization of Solidarity Economy (Lux09) <www.lux09.lu> (April 22-25, Luxembourg) on the initiatives related to the promotion of solidarity economy in Asia. I wish to thank the various members of the Social Enterprise Task Force (SETF) who contributed inputs to this report, notably George Chen (China), Usha Sridharan (India), Omseng Bora (Cambodia), Ho Thi Quy (Vietnam), Agung Alit (Indonesia), Sunil Chitrakar (Nelpal), Rene Guarin (Philippines), Willy Maldia (Philippines), Robert Abao (Philippines), and Mody Karunaratne (Sri Lanka).

It is my hope that by informing our various partners in other continents about our initiatives in Asia, the international collaboration towards expanding outreach to social enterprises in Asia and other continents will be further advanced. Let us continue our Building Shared Vision (BSV) Learning Journey, share our experiences and relevant information, and advance our own dialogue on social enterprises/ solidarity economy in Asia.

A socially responsible enterprise is often referred to as a ‘social enterprise”. It is a mission oriented enterprise with a triple bottom line, or the 3p’s – people, planet, and profit.

CSRSME Asia promotes the development of social enterprises (SE) in Asia through information exchange and resource sharing. This is carried out through the ‘Building Shared Vision’ (BSV) Learning which enables the SE to transform itself into a more dynamic and flexible learning organization.

BSV Workshops

In 2009, CSRSME Asia conducted one regional BSV workshop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia following the one conducted in Bangkok, Thailand in October 2008. BSV Bangkok gave birth to the conceptual framework of the Asian Alliance for Solidarity Economy (AASE) as a hub of solidarity economy in Asia. BSV Kuala Lumpur created the Social Enterprise Task Force (SETF) as a means for jump starting AASE. CSRSME Asia serves as the secretariat of SETF.

Several international organizations collaborated with CSRSME Asia in conducting the BSV Learning Journey. These included the RIPESS (International Association for the Promotion of Social and Solidarity Economy), SIDI (Society for Investment in Development Institutions), ALOE (Alliance for Responsible, Plural and Solidarity Economy), CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency), FPH (Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation), ADFIAP (Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia and the Pacific), and Oikocredit Southeast Asia.

The Social Enterprise Task Force (SETF)

As noted earlier, BSV Kuala Lumpur led to the creation of the Social Enterprise Task Force (SETF). To date, there are about 40 members of SETF from more than 30 organizations in15 countries (12 from Asian continent + 3 from other continents). Sunil Chitrakar and Ben Quinones, representatives of Asia to the RIPESS Board, are members of SETF. WFTO-Asia President Chandra Kacchipati has showed interest in beefing up SETF with participation of WFTO-Asia member companies in several Asian countries. continue reading…