LESSONS FROM SOCIAL BANKING

please forward to whom this might be of interest
(sorry for cross postings)




LESSONS FROM SOCIAL BANKING TOWARDS A NEW WELFARE SYSTEM?

Internet discussion
on the social-banking forum
January 1999

to subscribe, send a message to :
inaise@inaise.org

************************************************** *********


These last ten to twenty years have seen the emergence of a widespread and
diversified movement of financial initiatives all over the world. One of
their common features is that they serve mainly those sectors, territories,
people and groups of people that the mainstream banking sector is not
willing or no more able to serve. This is true for developing countries,
where the emergence of microcredit is seen by many observers as an
important breakthrough for poorer populations. But it is true also for the
Northern countries, where many financial initiatives - credit unions,
community funds, LETSchemes, community currencies, local development funds,
proximity investment clubs, credit mutuals and co-operatives, small and
micro-business funds, etc - gain a significant momentum, often addressing
traditional welfare "clients" and other new exclusion categories, in spite
of a still strongly present welfare state. This is a remarkable fact, and
it seems legitimate to ask whether our present welfare systems should not
find some inspiration from this new movement.

This is not just an intellectual exercise, and certainly not so for the new
social investors themselves. Because: what are we really building up here?
Are we just the spare wheel of the system, helping to reintegrate the
excluded and, paradoxically, helping to keep alive a system that keeps on
concentrating wealth and excluding those that cannot keep up with the pace?
Or do we contribute to creating something different, something systemically
constructive and coherent? But then, what is this new coherence? What are
the intuitions, the understandings behind this form of social progress, the
"common good" that we are trying to reach?


Christophe Guene
INAISE, International Association of Investors in the Social Economy

(Brussels, 8 January 1999)



NB: this announcement is also a call to people, think tanks, activists with
knowledge on the functioning of contemporary welfare and solidarity, to
help us forward from their perspective on what social finance is building
up.


************************************************** *********


to subscribe to the social-banking forum, send a message to :
inaise@inaise.org


************************************************** *********


With the support and collaboration of
the "Third System" Pilot Action of European Commission, DG V
the Heinrich Boell Foundation


************************************************** *********







This post transferred from the cdb-l mailing list