ECAS – Jan Forslund –SLUP.SE/Coompanion - Stockholm
Dear Audience
My name is Jan Forslund, and I am Managing Director at KIC and chairman of the board of the organised social economy in the County of Stockholm, Slup.se. KIC is a co-operative Agency in Stockholm– one of 25 CDA:s all over Sweden. In this autumn all the CDA:s in Sweden and our national federation will use the same trademark “Coompanion Co-operative development”.
In the summer 2000 I set up an informal meeting between some co-operative advisers KIC, and the new director of the regional development department at the Stockholm county board, Kjell Johansson. We discussed the need of economic growth in the region, and especially the possibility of creating new jobs and businesses in the social economy.
KIC had without much success tried to influence the county board policy (or lack of policy…) towards the growing numbers of new co-operatives and other business in the social economy. Kjell Johansson had former experience as a director of a local People’s House, a major supplier of meeting places and conference services in Sweden and an important part of the Swedish social economy. We understood each other and the process started.
We agreed on that small businesses and associations need specially designed support services – as do other businesses that want to survive and develop in competition with big companies and the public sector.
The meeting very soon led to the creation of a ‘social economy development group’ the same autumn. The group made a study of the size and content of the regional social economy and a plan of action. One of those actions was to make an application to the Equal programme in 2001. The aim of the Equal project application was to create a method with the purpose of bringing a broad partnership together in a more focused process.
The Equal partnership focused on the need for new support services adapted to the special needs in the social economy, especially for small co-operatives, associations and social businesses. They had difficulties in finding, among other things, financing for their projects and growth, support in public procurement, and marketing of their services, product and values
The two CDAs in the partnership, “KIC Kooperativ utveckling i Sverige” and “Social Ekonomi i Roslagen SER”, had a very important role in the project. We have good institutional relations with the Swedish government’s business development agency NUTEK, a network relationship with a lot of organisations in the regional social economy and they are themselves member-based associations, most of their over 150 members being new small co-operatives. KIC and SER are also connected to, the national organisation of CDAs, “Kooperativ utveckling i Sverige FKU”[1] which provides support to the professional co-operative advisers. The CDAs get up to 50% co-financing from NUTEK up to a certain ceiling, if they can also obtain regional financing of at least the same level. KIC and SER, the county board and a regional association of local development groups were the key actors who put in the main energy into the project.
In 2004, a member of KIC’s board, Professor Yohanan Stryjan, analysed KIC and the CDA system in a paper and concluded:
“The system’s evident success and high performance can be traced back to a number of key features. These are Public baseline financing, that provides a minimum level of stability and continuity (and, thus, reliability in the eyes of important others). Resource dependence on the political centre is balanced by an institutional requirement for matching financing, that motivates each LKU (CDA) to cultivate its local contacts and maintain its embeddedness. A loosely coupled federative structure that allows sufficient leeway for member LKUs (CDAs) in accommodating to local demands, while handling relationships with central political levels. A community of practice that stewards and nurtures its own body of knowledge and competence, and links the individuals active within the association in a professional organisation of co-operative consultants.”
The Equal project has enabled the two CDAs’ to take on more profound work in the Stockholm region.
The aim was a sustainable support structure producing services from and to the social economy. Therefore the services have to be built by the sector itself and with the most important actors involved in the process. A set of working groups produced reports, proposals and action plans setting out how to change the situation for the better. The partnership discussed the proposals and most of them were implemented as new services in the region.
By the end of the Equal project the partnership had created a new and better management and development methods for small co-operatives and associations, using social auditing, a manual on public procurement, a training method for leaders, a useful manual showing how to find financing and a manual “from voluntary association to social business” in the welfare sector. Finally a new broad regional association, Slup.se, was created including the biggest actors in the regional social economy. Slup.se has, as a final result of the Equal project with the same name, set up a website with all results, manuals and other products published in a popular way. News articles are published on Slup.se several times a week and a weekly newsletter is widely distributed.
The two CDAs have a co-ordinating role in Slup.se and they are also very active in an Equal action 3 project, the Socialt företagande (social enterprises) National Thematic Group. One of the working groups in this project, led by me, focus on the need of different kinds of support services to social firms.
Let me summarize: The Equal project SE-43 in Stockholm, Sweden, has proved that Co-operative Development Agencies (CDA) are an effective form of providing both services and tools to the social economy and also develop broad sustainable regional partnerships. CDA:s can be used to develop additional support structures such as new networks, associations and institutions. The CDA model could be used in other countries in the European Union. The CDA-model was created and still exists in UK, is developed as a national system in Sweden and is today spread out in the Baltic countries, Poland and Slovakia. I have been working in Poland, in Olsztyn, some years, supporting the set up of a CDA there. Another CDA is located in Krakow.
The Slup.se association and a partnership including the county board and the European social fund (ESF) work together in a “Platform for local development with social economy”. The process began in 2000, continued with the Equal project, and is now linked in to the public sectors and the government’s regular development planning process. More than 40 organisations, including two banks, are now active in Slup.se and the six working groups in the “platform”. The platform also uses the website in its communication with others.
The support service of “social auditing” is established. It involves KIC, SER and Studieförbundet Vuxenskolan (a nation wide adult training organisation) which provides tutors/ coaches, and a national association to promote social auditing and a network of auditors is newly set up. One of the partners in the project was the municipality of Värmdö Kommun. This municipality has decided to work very closely with the local and regional social economy and this is also formally expressed in a special programme for partnership with the social economy. In this spring another municipality in our region, Botkyrka, inspired by Värmdö, had also decided on such a program. The municipality of Värmdö is active in spreading this initiative in the region of Stockholm through the platform and also in Sweden and in Europe via the REVES network. The results of the Equal project are sustainable – it was not just “another project”!
Did we have problems? What where the obstacles – and did we overcome them? Of course we had problems. One of them was the lack of representatives in the partnership from immigrant organisations. Most of these organisations, NGO:s, are small and have no employees. When we set up the project we had a lot of contact and discussions with them but they decided to stay outside the inner circle. We solved the problem using a very open strategy and method in our work. We set up a lot of practical working groups – open for anyone, and many of them had meetings in the evening. The main Agenda was decided by the equal partnership but we had a very broad dialogue.
Another problem was that the representatives of the bigger partners, such as the city of Stockholm, had problems with the feedback from their organisation. Even though we made decisions in the partnership it took a very long time to change political decisions in higher levels in the organisation. Sometimes nobody took notice of our project – we were just one of many projects trying to get some attention. The solution was to work with the smaller municipality’s first – to create practical evidence. It has been successful – there is now a network among politicians in the region, mostly from these smaller municipals.
One of the project’s most important goals was to create a regional support structure. The actors providing those services were mainly actors in the social economy itself. The creation of the Slup.se association and the social audit organisation made it possible to establish new institutions involving key actors in the region and to connect them with the process. In both cases the Internet is used to spread information. The website contains an evaluation tool which will make it less expensive for small and medium co-operatives, businesses and association to use social audit as a natural part of their development and marketing process. The website contains among many other things resources and an Internet guide on how to participate in public procurement. Two videos/DVDs were produced during the project and are distributed via many channels.
We learned a lot from other countries. Many partners were active in the three transnational working groups. I was a member of the steering group as well as Lena Blixt from the municipality of Värmdö. The transnational work must be led by professionals but it is quite important that people “In the front line” also participate in this process – empowerment! Most of the interest was focused on social auditing. At the beginning of our project we arranged a big international conference with many guests. This was important later in the process. Contacts were established not only with the transnational partners in Italy but also in England and Scotland. It was important in the process to be able to compare different kind of methods, tools and experiences and understand them in a national context. The understanding of the development of social enterprises was delayed in the project, because the discussion was based on a Finnish “case” – the Red Cross experiences in Finland. They worked in a much bigger scale and more “top-down” than in Sweden, while Slup.se worked mainly with smaller associations
Representatives from KIC, SER and the county board participate in a national thematic group (NTG) entitled Socialt företagande (social enterprises), which is part of action 3 of the Equal programme. The NTG, led by two members of the Swedish parliament, highlights and works on tasks from six DPs in Sweden. Slup.se in Stockholm has chosen to concentrate on two issues: support structures and public procurement. In both cases the representatives in the working groups are co-operative advisers employed by KIC.
The most important lesson is the very well known fact that change takes time, especially if you want to change structures in bigger organisations and attitudes deeply rooted in people’s minds. The equal program, with its longer project time and follow-up-system with both national and European thematic groups has really changed the opportunities and has made change possible.
One of the results related to local development in the project was the creation of a strong networking organisation for local development groups in the Stockholm region. When the Equal project was set up 2001 there was a minor association of this kind, which was one of the partners, Rådet för local utveckling (the local development council). Four years later it has moved to its own office, doubled its membership and has its own financing. It is now officially a regional branch of a national organisation of local development groups. One of its local members is the municipality of Värmdö, and the local associations council, Värmdö Föreningsråd, has a deep co-operation with the local authorities. This is a result of the Equal project.
The project really worked as a partnership right from the beginning. Even though the co-ordinator, Elsmari Fjällström, and the project secretary, Birgitta Israelsson, were employed by the county board and not by a partner in the social economy, there was no problem for small organisations in the partnership to be seen or heard. It was an open partnership and gave practical opportunities for everybody to participate. The co-ordinator did not choose to work with an inner circle, but preferred broad working groups with participants from as many partners as possible (and even from outside the partnership). As said before, one big failure should be noted - there where no immigrant organisations in the partnership. At the beginning of the project a lot of them were contacted but finally they decided to not participate as a partner.
The project was supposed to create a support structure for the social economy, especially the smaller organisations and co-operatives. It was also important to give extra support to immigrant organisations. The methods used in the project activated many persons in the partnership but mostly in the developing of methods and tools – not so much in the decision-making. Social auditing was tested on the partnership itself and in a training course with ten organisations or co-ops as participants. Most of them are still interested in the method, contribute to the development work, and are spreading the results. The same method was used in other working groups. This is one of the reasons that the process is still going on. The “empowered” participants of the project were more deeply engaged, which led to a more sustainable result. This was the CDA’s aim when the project was constructed.
We have now a website with a lot of visitors, a regional newsletter and we are running some minor projects in the region. One of them is a project regarding “setting up new consortia of social enterprises in the process of public procurement”. The partnership Slup.se works and makes a difference!
Thank you for your attention
Jan Forslund
Jan Forslund
Co-operative Adviser and Managing Director
KIC/Coompanion – kooperativ utveckling Stockholms län, and chairman in SLUP.SE
Selmedalsringen 19, S-129 36 Hägersten, Sweden
Tel: +46 8 447 48 03
Mob: +46 70 726 48 03
Fax: +46 8 447 48 09
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