On May 17th 2017, the first results related to the Solidus project have presented to the representatives of some solidarity initiatives, whose actions selected due to their proven social impact. The meeting was held at the Faculty of Economy and Business of the University of Barcelona. The objective was, above all, to discuss and validate with relevant opinion leaders and stakeholders the key to solidarity actions with social impact in order to establish policy recommendations that can be used by policymakers to develop policies and instruments that recognize the potential of solidarity to achieve societal goals. One of the representatives mentioned “The social impact of the initiatives ensures that solidarity transcends the private sphere”.

During the presentation of the results, the project team highlighted the common shared drivers found in the more than 90 solidarity initiatives analysed around Europe and they are working in different policy areas such as housing, employment, health, education and civic engagement. Democracy, transparency, plurality, social and political impact, recognition, scalability and dialogic interactions are among the common elements shared by all of them to guarantee solidarity actions with social impact. The debate allowed highlighting the main barriers  these initiatives face to achieve citizen participation focused mainly on the disenchantment as an element that might cause lose the enthusiasm for the initiative and the strong recommendation on improving the collection of specific quantitative and qualitative evidences to show the social and political impact solidarity initiatives achieve. To overcome such barriers, participants agreed that there is a need to involve people in the initiatives in order to avoid that the solidarity action depends on specific people and to promote dialogic leadership and the individual capacities of members taking part of the initiative for the common good.

SOLIDUS, Solidarity in European Societies: Empowerment, Social Justice and Citizenship (Grant Agreement nº 649489) funded by the research and innovation Horizon 2020 Programme of the European Commission and led by Dr. Marta Soler (UB). The aim of the project is identify scientifically which successful actions based on solidarity are been carried out in the European context, in order to examine its potential transferability to different contexts and political implications.

 

Claus per promoure accions solidàries amb impacte (Keys to promote solidarity actions with impact)