In the 80s, Max Delespesse had the idea of bringing the Walloon initiatives around a common project, the « Carrefour des Alternatives » ("Crossroad of Alternatives").
Fourteen years earlier, he had already taken the initiative to bring new communities that had developed in Belgium and abroad in the form of the International Community Center (ICC).
During the early '80s, the community movement has weakened but a number of its former members begin to create new cooperatives and alternative economic and social relevance businesses. In 1981, Solidarité des Alternatives Wallonnes (Solidarity of Walloon Alternatives, SAW in French) came -together with the Belgian Federation of Cooperatives of the socialist movement (Febecoop) and the National Federation of Christian Cooperatives (FNCC) - the first Walloon pluralist federation. SAW has as a general objective to become a place of convergence, meetings, expression and development for the "new cooperation" and all the alternative ways. In 1984, SAW equiped CECOP, then the "Committee of European workers' production cooperatives" created in 1979, of an operational secretariat. SAW subsidised 3 positions that allow CECOP to start its activities.
Without Max Delespesse, CECOP would have needed much more time to develop a permanent secretariat, and we must remember that many things are owed to him. Photo Caption: Max Delespesse and his wife, Linette Dengis - Delespesse
