From February 5 to 8, 2024, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, hosted an event organized by the Comparte Network and Reas Euskadi focused on Solidarity Economic Circuits (CES) and Social Markets (MES) for Buen Vivir.

In late 2023, the Comparte Network , in alliance with REAS Euskadi, concluded the second phase of efforts to promote CES. To close the year and set the stage for future initiatives, we planned a gathering in Xela, Guatemala, for November. However, due to the sociopolitical climate at that time, the meeting had to be postponed.

A few weeks later, following significant mobilization from the Maya population in Guatemala and international pressure, the country’s situation stabilized, allowing the event to take place successfully from February 5 to 8, 2024.

During the gathering, participants learned about the efforts led by Comparte’s partner in Guatemala, SERJUS, highlighting the importance of CES as a network of social and organizational connections rooted in local communities. Here you can find all the information about it, but we could summarize it as follows:

“A Solidarity Economic Circuit is defined as a space for integrating the practices and actors of the Social and Solidarity Economy. CES aims to support aspects such as healthy production, solidarity finance, fair trade, responsible consumption, post-consumption, community tourism, and ancestral health, all working together to meet fundamental human needs and build a peaceful society rooted in Buen Vivir.”

This definition reflects CES’s alignment with the work of the Comparte network. A CES within a community provides a framework to consolidate various methodologies developed over the years. For instance, a clear synergy exists between the Participatory Guarantee System (SPG) and CES, as SPG strengthens local organizations and links production directly to consumption. Building a CES on such a foundation is more attainable than starting in less organized areas. Other efforts, such as gender equity initiatives, ensuring women’s participation without burdening them with “triple shifts,” and the development of the SASA (Socio-Environmental Audit System) for data-driven CES advancement, also contribute significantly.

The gathering aimed to achieve two goals: to share progress across different regions and collectively extract insights to guide our future direction. The primary participants were the five Social Centers from the Comparte network that demonstrated the greatest potential for CES development, the Social Market of Euskadi, advisors of the process, and members of the Comparte Network’s technical team. These participants included:

• As hosts of the meeting, the SERJUS team: Claudia Ruiz, Mayra Leiva, Sandra Montejo, Cristian Fuentes, Erick Stewart, and Joaquín Dionicio, actively participated in the meeting while ensuring the logistical smoothness and well-being of everyone involved. Thank you for that!
• From Colombia (Valle del Cauca), Omar Sánchez joined us as the representative of IMCA.
• A bit further south, still in Colombia, from SUYUSAMA, colleagues Marco Luis Gómez and David Esteban Enríquez shared the inspiring progress they have made in Pasto.
• Crossing the border, from Ecuador, the Hogar de Cristo team joined us, with Denisse Avilés and Jessica Ochoa, who are promoting the CES in Guayaquil.
• Also from Ecuador, a key figure who has supported several social centers and the entire process as an advisor: Jhonny Jiménez. It’s worth mentioning here that due to the date change, the other advisor of the agreement, José Andrés Fuentes, could not join us.
• Zaloa Pérez and Javier González participated as part of the REAS Euskadi team. Their more established MES (social market = CES) process provides a refreshing perspective for the rest of the group.
• As a kind of caravan, we aim to add two new Social Centers to the CES process each year. This year, SVCX has been one of the new additions, and due to geographic proximity, they joined the meeting.
• The marketing and executive secretaries of Red Comparte also participated.

The workshop followed a simple structure. On Monday, each of the Centers explained the activities they have carried out throughout the year, both from the desk (delving into the Strategic Reading of the territory, designing the CES and its roadmap…) and from the territory (meetings with local agents, fairs…). Additionally, an effort was made to draw learnings and challenges from each of the territories, which would fuel one of Wednesday’s activities.

At 6:00 a.m. the next day, we were already in the vehicles that took us, in two groups, to visit two organizational experiences that SERJUS supports: COMDIQ and ADESMA. Both are mainly agricultural organizations that group other organizations, ensuring strong articulation of the territory.

On Wednesday, after sharing and reflecting on the previous day’s visits, we had the opportunity to systematize the learnings, challenges, and gender issues that we extracted from each of the territories. This allowed us to capture the most important aspects to consider in upcoming activities. In the afternoon, we were in the hands of Zaloa and Jhonny to carry out participatory workshops on gender and interculturality, respectively. These workshops had the dual intention of making us reflect on these topics and equipping us with tools to replicate them in our territories.

We finished the meeting on Thursday with collective work to start building an indicator tool that allows us to measure the deployment of CES (and therefore their roadmaps) in each of the territories. We aspire to have an agile and easy-to-use tool so that each territory can adapt it to its reality.

It’s worth noting that with this meeting, we reconfirmed the importance of working on these approaches as a network. Each of the CES presents countless challenges to overcome in order to reach the desired level of deployment, but gathering and being able to share the progress allows us to gather the learnings and share them among everyone, thus helping to overcome these challenges.

The meeting has also been an energy boost for everyone returning to their territories with a backpack full of new ideas and the desire to continue working to build economic alternatives with territorial scope that bring us closer to Buen Vivir.