Dourdan Strategic Meeting Summary
Pierre W. Johnson

PARTICIPANTS
The Dourdan meeting gathered 8 participants (Marcos Arruda, Carine Guidicelli, Paul Maquet, Ben Quiñones, Leida Rijnhout, Guy Vandebrouck, Françoise Wautiez and Laurent Fraisse, that joined us on Saturday). There was a good representation of the diversity of geographical origins and of 
centers of interest. There were however only 3 women, and nobody from the African continent. Marie-Claire Sanoussi of Guinea could not attend because of visa questions. 2 observers collaborating with the FPH were also present (Oriol Alsina and Aurore La Lucq), as well as Philippe Amouroux and 
Pierre Johnson as facilitators. Let's not forget the very useful contribution of our 2 interpreters, 
Christophe and Laurent.

MAIN TOPICS COVERED
The agenda of the meeting had been distributed and discussed beforehand. However, it appeared that some key questions deserved further discussion. It is why I will summarize the content of the meeting following three big topics.
My assessment will later mention the positive elements, and the issues that in my opinion remain to contemplate.

1 / the objectives of the meeting
2 / the main challenges
3 / the strategy
a / The method to follow
b / The content (main strategic axes)
c / The expected products
d / The follow-up

SUMMARY

1 / THE OBJECTIVES
The discussion on the objectives of the meeting began like anticipated the first day, but continued like a leitmotive during the following days, illustrating the difficulty of the proposed exercise.
There is a consensus on a feeling of emergency (see next part), but also on the interlacing of the issues.
Our main challenge is to address a clear message, in a complex situation. 
We must define precisely to whom we want to address this message, and to propose mobilizing agendas, more then accusations or recommendations. This message should permit to recruit new strengths, that adhere to our vision, in order to arrive to a critical mass.
We also want to elaborate after the meeting a certain number of products, that we have to define.

2 / THE CHALLENGES
The Workgroup on Solidarity Socio-Economy (WSSE) and the Alliance produced several documents on contemporary challenges.
There is a general agreement on the content of the challenges, and on the fact that they are inter-woven. The difficulty is then to hierarchize the challenges and to identify the leverages to address them. During, the meeting, work in groups allowed to get 18 main challenges and 18 barriers to the identified change. The group of Marcos Arruda also expressed 15 actions addressing these challenges. I am going to continue the systematization of the challenges, and to include them in the new strategies maps.

Among the challenges concerning the alliance, we can recall Paul's suggestion, that brings us to the complementarity between the economic and political spheres: to overcome the divisions slightly artificial between workgroups, notably the WSSE and the governance and citizenship workgroup

3 / THE STRATEGIES

a / THE METHOD TO FOLLOW
The discussion revealed:
- the necessity to define who speaks, and to whom we want to address ourselves
- the importance that the form of the message will have
- tensions between content and involvement: more one defines a precise content, more it is difficult to explain it and to convince some of the outside parts. Guy V. suggested to imply ourselves more in the path than in the solution, while proposing mobilizing agendas.
There was not an explicit consensus on this last point, but it provided an indication for work on the strategic axes and the content.
- the necessity to identify agents of change
Guy also recalled that there is a lack of relations and work with companies and governments. He recommends to work with them and not against them. It is necessary to find the conditions to create a non aggressive dialogue between stakeholders. A solution can be also to express what the rules of the game of solidarity economy are, so that all can participate to this game. Marcos underlined that the agenda that we are going to propose is an agenda of action. It must comprise a process of validation.
Our process must be open.
- a position to define regarding sustainable development
Leida questioned the contribution of this meeting and the WSSE with regards to the agenda 21 and to the national strategies for sustainable development, the main problem being their implementation. A partial answer was given by stressing out the dimension of values and representations, not always present in the strategies of SD, following an axis that would be "a sustainable human development" (see "Strategies" below).

B / THE CONTENT: THE MAIN STRATEGIC AXES

The major strategic objective that seems to have emerged during the meeting has been expressed by the group of Marcos A. and Ben Q.: "Building a sustainable human development." This development would come from the inside, i.e. from the potentialities and creativeness of every individual and human group, in the respect of the others and the ecosphère.

The main engine allowing the transition toward this type of development is the change in representations and the stressing out of new values and principles. The necessity of "re-funding the economics" has been recognized, while specifying that it is not only redefining basic economic 
concepts, but also including social studies and ecology into it. Few suggestions have been advanced on the means to arrive to these changes, except two from Guy V.,:
-	To have the vision of solidarity economy tested by several social groups
-	To tell what the rules of the game are, so that everybody can participate to this game
	
To build a sustainable human development supposes to systematize and to disseminate the innovations. For that, it is necessary to have the social profit of the enterprises of solidarity economy recognized, which supposes to undertake diagnostic studies of economic initiatives based on solidarity, and to develop suitable indicators, permitting to benchmark the social performance.
But it is necessary to touch the other economic actors as well, and the political dimension. The local level has been identified as the applicable starting point and key for the integration and articulation of practices of solidarity economy and political innovations.
After having tackled this level, it is necessary to reach the regional and national levels then, and to influence public policies. At the national level, we could take as a basis to invest the "national sustainable development strategies", as Leida suggested. The continental level could be the subject of specific projects.
We shouldn't forget the necessity to articulate the scales of exchanges, and to facilitate the networking of actors at different scales. With companies, Guy proposes a "lateral strategy", consisting in "building together". The strategies proposed must be discriminative as for social performance of economic activities, without appearing excluding or aggressive towards private corporations. The idea of "rules of the game" (see above) goes in this direction.

The necessity of setting up new regulations defines a major strategic axis. Marcos detailed the reasons of this requirement, that one could summarize thus: in facts, the market does not autoregulate by itself. It not only creates wealth, but also many undesirable effects (nepotism, corruption, tax evasion, lack of transparency, unilateralism, monopolies and cartels, exploitation of work, irresponsible borrowing and lending, money laundrying, waste of resources, etc.). Regulations are the mechanisms that society sets in motion to assure its dynamic balance. The group suggested that these regulations should obey the principles of a legitimate and efficient governance (that should be systematized). Their implementation suggests two dimensions:
-	To improve the existing mechanisms of citizen control / regulation.
-	To implement new mechanisms of regulation
These changes operate of course at all levels (individual, local, national, regional and global). The political processes should be re-founded, especially at the national and global levels. A definition of the ideal role of the different types of actors was outlined, with a discussion on the role of the State, and a vision of the horizon for companies as being "human communities".

The promotion and the diffusion of a solidarity socio-economy and a sustainable human development raised the same issues than the content of this meeting (see "the method to follow"). It deals with the follow-up of this meeting.

C / THE EXPECTED PRODUCTS
The funding of this meeting and of its preparation makes it necessary to elaborate two products:
* a publication, that will be coordinated by Philippe A.
* cartographies (maps), with Pierre J.,
But the will to distribute a clear message to a large or targeted public makes it desirable to elaborate other products. The participants were creative enough in the identification of these products. We arrived at a detailed description of possible products:
* The publication could have 3 parts, it could tell like a story, and would underline:
i / the holistic vision, the challenges, the practices, specially at the local level.
ii / the strategies of solidarity economy for sustainable human development: consumption, production, etc. It could be accompanied by cartographies.
iii / The next steps for solidarity economy in the future: policies, regulations, social responsibility, international organizations, networks, promotion,
* A multimedia tool (CD Rom and Web site), guiding each visitor through a privileged entry (Actors, Topics, Strategies), before discovering all the agenda.
* A guide or practical manual for actors, containing precise sections: the different practices, etc.
* A group has imagined a set of messages taking the appearance of classified ads, to distribute and publish,: "Wanted... "

D / THE FOLLOW-UP
Some participants intended to contribute to the development of the products.
Philippe Amouroux committed to coordinate the publication, with the collaboration of the interested people. Philippe noted the interest and every participant's availability. He will circulate that information, and will inform us of the modest resources available.
For my part, I must produce a synthesis and the cartographic representations of the meeting. I will also use this list to have your opinion and possibly discussions on the issues that were not enough dealt with during the meeting.
This meeting gathered an interesting group, coherent and diverse. We hope that you will be a little bit available remotely to finalize its results.