With about 50 participants, the school counted with the presence of professors and students from various German universities (Berlin, Kassel, Cologne, Stuttgart) as well as representatives from both catholic and protestant churches, trade unions and local government.
Bruno Roelants gave a presentation on the role and contribution of worker cooperatives to local development, including some concrete examples like Ardelaine in France, which made a strong impression on the participants given the similarities between the regions of Ardeche and North Hessen.
Other people from the CECOP network also took an active part: Marie Luise Cavallaro and Burghard Flieger from NETZ, and Paolo Galeotti and Stefania Checchelani from Solco Mantova (member Federsolidarietà), accompanied by a representative of the Mantova public administration. Several speakers were invited to share their knowledge on: European Union regional policy (Claudia Sanchez Bajo, PhD in development studies and researcher on regional integration), Italian incubators of social cooperatives (Dario Carrera from Rome Tor Vergara University), and Brazilian university incubators (Rosangela Alvez de Oliveira from Kassel University), while Burghard Flieger presented the German cooperative incubator Innova.
Through workshops based on participative methodologies, fours groups worked out priorities, strategies and concrete steps for regional development, in particular on sustainable development and energy, food production and consumption, a regional incubator of solidarity economy initiatives and especially cooperatives, and regional finance and token currencies.
Finally, an international declaration was discussed and signed by all those present to support and promote the initiatives approved by consensus.
