Workshops and seminar on “Solidarity Finance”
Why not take a decisive step
forward toward a global system of social finance?
Today’s
solidarity finance: Countless initiatives
We are witnessing the rapid development of solidarity
finance within each of our countries. To a large extent, such development
explains the indifference exhibited by traditional financial institutions
toward a major portion of territories, communities and economies; nonetheless,
this movement has gone anyway, thanks to the efforts of people, groups or
associations who have refused to comply with this situation of being ignored.
Thus, we note the
following:
·
The
emergence and development of a multiplicity of solidarity finance agents at
various levels : the majority existing at the local level (microfinance
institutions, MFIs) ; those at the national or semi-national levels
(financial concerns, or even banks), and sometimes at the international level
(guarantee funds or solidarity investment companies),
·
The
emergence in certain regions of new creative currencies, of new kinds of
exchanges and of new local financial systems,
·
The
construction of new financial channels including, on one hand, financing offers
(by private savers or public lenders) and, on the other hand, financing requests (by borrowers or private
entrepreneurs). Such channels are also active on various levels, including
internationally.
Strengthening
cooperation between solidarity finance agents and, as such, why not construct a
“global solidarity finance system” at the same time?
Finance
attempts to reconcile financing offers to requests. Social finance endeavours
to ensure that such linking is done fairly and that the financing of economic
activities contributes beneficially to the society, the environment and the
territory.
Nowadays,
each solidarity finance agent acts within a complex environment, an environment
which in general, is hardly favourable. Each obtains its own financial resources, forming partnerships
with local institutions or international financial agencies and consequently,
their activities are defined in function of the means of assistance.
The following
conditions all favour the matching of offers to requests in the solidarity
finance realm: associations of the various solidarity finance agents; the
creation of new channels that bring together savers and social entrepreneurs as
well as motivate the necessary intermediaries to facilitate the functioning of
these financing chains; and active support of international solidarity finance
agents (investment companies, guarantee
funds, instances of labelling and control...). Furthermore, these solidarity
finance offers and requests thus are equally available to all, regardless of
geographic location. Such co-operation between actual agents and
initiatives implemented to reinforce weak or non-existent links in the bonds of
solidarity will give rise to what we call a “global system of solidarity
finance” (GSFS).
This GSFS
must be understood as the total of all those solidarity finance channels or
systems, both national and international, who come together on the basis of the
principles of subsidiarity. Its very structure must give appropriate priority
to local channels, creators of economies and local resources.
Toward
the participation of all the solidarity finance agents from all around the
world
We number in
the hundreds, and tomorrow, in the thousands. We are in contact thanks to the
Internet as well as to the networks we have built together. The event in Porto
Alegre will be a meeting for dozens of us, solidarity finance agents, representing
hundreds of partners, brought together by our desire and intention to engage in
exchange, as well as the next step of co-operation. We come together once again
to pursue this concept of the GSFS and we will determine what each of us,
specifically each group of agents, can do to contribute as well as to benefit
from such a global cooperation. Porto Alegre III could represent an historic
moment for solidarity finance, a point of departure for the creation of a GSFS.
The success of this process depends upon us.
We thus
propose to you, much as we have proposed to ourselves, that you come and
participate in an encounter of the “Founders of GSFS” and contribute your
efforts toward the creation of a global collaboration in the area of solidarity
finance. We will gather in Porto Alegre to see how we can organise such an
encounter. However, we wish to stipulate from the very outset that the number
of institutions created will be limited. For us, a GSFS should be nothing more than a synergistic exploration
between independent agents that share the common intention to draft an entirely
new concept of finances that resolve social dramas and environmental issues,
questions which affect nothing less than the future of humanity and the planet.
I
would like to participate in the encounter of the founders of a global system
of solidarity finance:
·
Organisation:
·
Address:
·
Name of
the undersigned