GSEF social economy session (Int’l forum on Urban Policy for the SDGs)

8 Jun, Seoul, Korea

GSEF organised the social economy session at the International forum on Urban Policy for the SDGs. The central theme of the GSEF session was on potential of social economy as an urban policy tools for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). GSEF invited 4 distinguished panelists for the session.

Jean Fabre (former Deputy-Director, UNDP): Provided a broad overview of the role of social and solidarity economy in achieving sustainable urban development by introducing initiatives of London / Canada / Mali.

Denison Jayasooria (Deputy Chairman, RIPESS Asia): Introduced various social and solidarity economy initiatives across Asia with a particular focus on community centred, bottom-up initiatives.

Seon-Seop Kang (Director, SE division, Seoul Metropolitan Gov): Demonstrated that the local government can be a crucial player in establishing social economy eco-system through the various policy support and administrative backups with particular emphasis on Seoul’s new policy trend since 2012 onwards.

Dae-hoon Kim (Executive Manager, iCOOP Co-operative Dev. Center): Introduced the success case of iCOOP and demonstrated the ways of cooperative enterprises revitalising an underpopulated rural area based on cooperation with local community and local authority.