In November about 35 members of the WSSE met over a few days in Toubab Dialaw, near Dakar, Senegal, to share progress on the activities of the various workshops, discuss the future of the WSSE, and prepare the RIPESS (Intercontinental Network for the Promotion of Social and Solidarity Economy) conference that took place shortly after in Dakar. The WSSE meetings are precious opportunities for sharing thoughts and ideas on the issues tackled by the different workshops and creating interaction between them. The thematic workshops Fair Trade, Women and Economy, Solidarity Finance, Societal Responsibility of Socio-Economic Agents, Environmental Justice and Ecological Debt, as well as the cross-cutting workshops on Vision, International Regulations and Indicators gave presentations of their activities. Four specialists also gave presentations on the issues of Social Money, Finance and Society, and Territories and Farmers, which are not areas currently operating as WSSE workshops, but are issues that concern the WSSE and are covered in other ways. The presentations showed that the solidarity economy and WSSE can now present strong alternatives to conventional economics, backed up by concrete results which are often measurable, for example, in terms of social performance. The question that now needs to be posed is: how can we reinforce, integrate and extend these alternatives? The answers are not easy, and are closely linked to practical issues, as well as to building common visions and tools.

I also gave a presentation of our work on a Strategic Agenda for the XXIst century (please open using Microsoft Powerpoint® PowerPoint or a compatible programme). The reactions to the presentation pinpointed some areas where WSSE proposals are still poorly developed. Other workshops, such as Women and Economy and International Regulations, also mentioned areas that need further research and development. In terms of International Regulations, for example, there is still no definite position on the WTO or on Regional Integration. The positions of members of our networks are sometimes different (for example on the role of the State), or even divergent. This shows that the WSSE still has to extend discussion and deliberation in these areas, and provided me with more evidence to show in the text of the Agenda the areas where the process of deliberation needs to be developed. The meeting was thus useful in providing a global assessment of the WSSE’s work, its progress and its deficiencies.

The issues that generated the most discussion at the meeting were the cross-cutting workshops and topics, such as Vision of an Integrated Solidarity Socio-Economy, and the presentation on Territories. Different aspects of the work of the Vision workshop were presented by Marcos Arruda from Brazil and Luis Lopzellera and Chilo Villareal, both from Mexico. The discussions and group work that followed showed strong cultural differences in the views of the solidarity socio-economy, which I would sum up with two questions: Should Culture be incorporated into the SSE? Is the SSE a global alternative which includes all the aspects of human life, or is it just part of broader alternatives? There seems to be a clear-cut difference between the Latin Americans and the French-speaking participants on this issue. English speaking and Asian participants seemed less troubled by this debate. The two presentations initiating a new workshop, Evaluation and Indicators of a Solidarity Socio-Economy, underlined the need for all thematic workshops to participate in its work, and for local and practical indicators for all SSE practices to be developed.

Conclusions
The WSSE’s work is moving forward. The Toubab Dialaw meeting shows that we need more opportunities and mechanisms for sharing thoughts, ideas and results across the various issues. The launching of cross-cutting workshops requires the attention and the participation of all of us, whatever practice we are principally involved in. There is still a lot of work to be done in terms of pooling the results of the different workshops and detailing cross-cutting methods and concepts that should apply to all workshops. But the WSSE’s impressive organisation of workshops with quality speeches and debates at the RIPESS symposium shows that it is already a unique platform for those who believe that “another economy is possible”, and who are putting it into practice.