ScaleChanger took the floor during a United Nations (UN) meeting on “How can the international recognition of Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) help achieve the SDGs through social and inclusive innovation?”

On December 13th, 2022, ScaleChanger was given the opportunity to speak during a meeting scheduled at the UN headquarters. Marlène Schiappa, French Secretary of State for Social and Solidarity Economy & Associative Life opened the meeting. She came to defend a draft resolution dedicated to the SSE sector. The aim was to obtain international recognition of the values of the social and solidarity economy.

Summary

This event raised awareness on the positive development impact of the social and solidarity economy, that can help localize the SDGs and render the recovery more inclusive, resilient and sustainable using experiences shared by Member States and civil society. 

Description

The Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) encompasses enterprises, organizations and other entities that are engaged in economic, social, and environmental activities to serve the collective and/or general interest, which are based on the principles of voluntary cooperation and mutual aid, democratic and/or participatory governance, autonomy and independence, and the primacy of people and social purpose over capital in the distribution and use of surpluses and/or profits as well as assets.

Watch the replay on UN TV 👉 https://media.un.org/en/asset/k11/k11kysh0gc

Isabelle Hoyaux shared the following with the audience (you can listen to her speech at 02:23:08 of the replay)

ScaleChanger is a social enterprise that supports the scaling of social innovations, in France and across the globe. Today I would like to share with you some of our key insights from over 8 years of supporting SSE’s in their scaling journey.

First of all, why scale ? As has been discussed, SSE are contributing to the SDGs, but when we consider the size of the problems often they are still a drop in the ocean. It is essential that the scale of solutions matches the scale of problems. When we talk about scaling though, we talk about scaling the impact not necessarily the organisation. That can be through replication by others, policy adoption of SSE’s innovation, …

At ScaleChanger, we work with the SSE leaders on how they can grow their impact in the most effective way. But the SSE leaders cannot do it all alone, they need a conducive and enabling environment, where their specificities are recognised, where funds are core funding that can be allocated to design strategies, systemise approaches, test and not only to deliver projects. By acting at both levels, we can make a difference and scale what works.

UN meeting, New York Dec 13th, 2022