Introduction

The Inaugural Meeting of Global Social Economy Forum 2014 (GSEF 2014) will be heldfor three days from the 17th to 19th of November in Seoul, South Korea. The purpose of the meeting is to resolve global crisis as well as local issues. Furthermore, the meeting will be a place of collaboration and solidarity of both international and national local governments and social organizations that are leaders in social economy.

Following last year’s Global Social Economy Forum 2013, the inaugural meeting will be cohosted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the GSEF 2014 SeoulOrganizing Committee.It will be conducted among leading local governments and social economy organizations that are actively resolving social issues by vitalizing social economy. The inaugural meeting will also serve as the networking opportune for the global innovation cities and organizations toshare their vision and experiences to better our future.

The inaugural meeting will not be following the conventional method of the hosts simply inviting foreign participants; but it will practice collaboration and solidarity, the essence of social economy, by involving the local government participants and organization participants in the preparatory process. The purpose of the meeting is to collaboratively decide and establish the characteristics and status of the newly establishing global social economy solidarity and its roles and joint action plan to contribute to the international society. When the future participants agree, we hope to develop GSEF, the new global network of social economy sector,into a more dynamic and active solidarity.

The inauguration of the global social economy solidarity is based on the multilateral network in accordance with the Seoul Declaration that was adopted by 8 local governments and 9 social economy organizations during the GSEF 2013. As the inaugural meeting will be accompanied by a memorandum forum that will present various programs, the experts and actors of different sectors of social economy and the citizens can interact freely so the meeting will be even more meaningful.

The GSEF 2014 will provide an opportunity for a more meaningful and effective participation through various social economy education programs targeted for all associations and their members. It will give the best of its efforts to share various resources for development of each local social economy.

Background

From November 5th to November 7th of 2013, Global Social Economy Forum 2013 was held in Seoul, South Korea under the theme, “New Discovery of Collaboration.

More importantly, the GSEF 2013 took its first step towards resolving the global socioeconomic crisis by adopting the Seoul Declaration, the result of the determination of the local governments and social organizations, who recognized the need of a global solidarity for social economy, to establish a global solidarity network based on the multilateral international network.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government, the Seoul Organizing Committee of the Inaugural Meeting of the GSEF, and the Seoul Social Economy Center (the Provisional Secretariat) are planning to host the inaugural meeting of the GSEF in Seoul on November 17-19, 2014. The success of the Inaugural Meeting of the GSEF depends on the active participation from the local governments and the NGOs with the vision of realizing the ideas of social economy.

Slogan and Themes

Solidarity for Change signifies the changes that social economy pursues: the change of all our ethnic values to pursue a life of solidarity over competition; and the shift of paradigm from regeneration of bipolarization to a more collaborative community.

Not one country can solely resolve a crisis of global scale regarding the environment, ecology, energy and economy. So we strongly believe that social economy as a means of collaboration will present us with a better life and a better world through social innovation, overcoming ecological crisis, recovery of the excluded people’s dignity, and intensification and expansion of participatory democracy.

Therefore, in order to actualize such conviction, a detailed and sustainable action plan will be discussed and created based on global social economy solidarity network at the upcoming inaugural meeting. The action plan will include the following themes:

• Establishment of Social Economy Network based on ‘Public-Private-Community Partnership’
• Joint Development of Education Program for Social Economy Solidarity and Action through Civil Society
• Management and Planning of a Social Economy Personal Exchange Program to Foster Human Resources and to Share Visions and Experiences
• Development of a Developmental Model that Harmonizes Social Economy-Market Economy-Public Economy
• Support for Development of Social Economy Association and Support Organization and for Collaboration amongst them
• Effort to Integrally Resolve the Underdeveloped Country’s Multisided Issues through Social Economy Means
• Promotion of Global Joint Action and Solidarity among various Movements and Agendas such as Women’s Rights, Labor, Environmental and Medical.
• Discussion of development agenda to fulfill the UN’s next generational ‘Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s)’ that will replace the ‘Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s)’ that will expire in the year 2015
• Effort for Policy Development and Modifications of each national and local governments that can support and guarantee the purposes stated above

Central Themes

The themes above will be handled in the following five themes through invited sessions during the forum

• 
  Social Finance

  establishing a healthy financial foundation to resolve monopolistic profits, increase of bipolarization of debt ratio

• 
  Social Economy and Education

  lifelong study created by joint initiatives of school, local community, educators, students, citizens and government

• 
  Social Economy and Labor

  creating sustainable society that guarantees the right to work despite the employment instability and discrimination

• 
  Urban Regeneration

  creating a community that improves everyone’s quality of life instead of indiscreet urban redevelopment

• 
  Sharing Economy

  building environmental, altruistic, and social relationship instead of mass consumption and production